2. The Misleading Marketing Pitch

Amanda Knox was tried and convicted for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, who died from knife wounds in the apartment she shared with Knox in 2007. Knox and her then-boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, were both found guilty of killing Kercher, receiving 26- and 25-year prison sentences, respectively. In October 2011, Knox and Sollecito were acquitted and set free. In March 2013, Knox was ordered to stand trial again for Kercher’s murder; Italy’s final court of appeal, the Court of Cassation, overturned both Knox’s and Sollecito’s acquittals. Knox and Sollecito were again found guilty of murder in February 2014, with Sollecito receiving a 25-year prison sentence and Knox receiving a 28.5-year sentence. The Supreme Court of Italy overturned her and Sollecito’s convictions in 2015.

3. How That Pitch Misleads

The marketing of Knox as cash-cow is replete with wrong implications, to get the paying customers quickly on the hook before it occurs to check with Italy. Here are several:

1. There were several trials and Italy just kept trying

Untrue. In fact (1) there was ONE very definitive trial, in 2009; (2) Knox and Sollecito appealed in 2011 on very narrow grounds and were wrongly set free as appeals were not done; that court was provably bent and the result was annulled by the Supreme Court’s First Chambers (the “murder court”); (3) Knox and Sollecito repeated their first appeal in 2013-14 but the guilty verdict was confirmed; (4) in Knox’s and Sollecito’s final appeal a provably bent Fifth Chambers (which normally never handles murders) declared them not guilty, but involved anyway, in the mother of all weird rulings. Had that appeal correctly gone back to First Chambers, they would still be locked up.

2. All four years Knox was in prison were unjustified

Untrue. Three of those years were full justified because with no provocation she accused an innocent man of murder and never ever retracted her claim. Endemically Knox tries to make out her “interrogation” was forced and therefore it was all the cops’ fault not hers. But see here. There was actually no interrogation as such at all, she was not forced to confess, the malicious accusation of murder against an innocent man was spontaneous, and she did sustain it for several weeks.

3. Knox was exonerated proving lower courts wrong

Untrue. Knox was not exonerated. And the provable bending of three courts is ignored. The mafia role in sliming Italian justice and liberating the pair is swept under the rug. Almost every Italian has long known what was going on but to talk about it or write about it is not something they like to do. The existence of the mafias does not make them proud and to talk of them is not always safe. We first wrote extensively here and most recently again extensively here about why and how the manipulations occurred.

4. Knox is a model for all prisoners wrongly held

Untrue. They can learn nothing from this. Maybe 200,000 are wrongly held in the US; are any seeing a way out via Knox? There is no mention of the role of the brutal PR campaign which few could afford. Omitted is how damaging and dishonest it was and still is, how destructive to so many additional victims of Knox, and how focused on making a buck. Knox is not the only speaker being paid to lie to crowds; others are as well. Numerous books and articles are involved and media and consultant fees. This is a cash industry now, not a charity.

4. Where This Hoaxfest Goes Next

More and more is out in the open. There are attempts to change the subject when curiosity about these subjects is on the rise - but notice how there is no direct pushback and there are no legal threats. Those who have foolishly acted as witting or unwitting mafia tools want zero attention to their roles here.

Don Corleone surely smiles broadly in his grave. Never has Italian justice been trashed around the world on a scale anything like this. Very nice if groups who have rented Knox and become aware they were hoaxed choose to demand their $10,000 back right now. That’d end the blood-money flow at one stroke.

Friday, January 26, 2018

1. Amanda Knox

We are told none of that was ever shared. College management did their students no favors at all by lying by omission about Knox.

College management KNEW that Knox lies on an epic scale and has no real respect for truth. They KNEW the case against Knox was actually one of exceptional strength. They KNEW Knox is a felon for life for framing an innocent man and that she rightly served three years.

They KNEW Knox in Perugia had been heavily on drugs. They KNEW she was not an exchange student and was a growing nuisance to those around. They KNEW that Knox demonizes Italy and its fine, fair justice system and staff, and that she encourages bigotry and dangerous hate.

They KNEW the Supreme Court’s final verdict was provably bent and the Ndrangheta played some role.

Wrongly demonizing police and courts, and wrongly demonizing foreigners, are very dangerous games which if absorbed as lifetime lessons will cause serious psychological and social disarray.

WHY were fee-paying Roanoke students never provided by management with this reality check?

2. Elizabeth Smart

The only other American in victim mode so prominently making herself available for speakers gigs is the REAL victim Elizabeth Smart.

She is the Mormon girl abducted from her Salt Lake City home when she was 14 by a fundamentalist pair. Although some do believe she may have been kidnapped willingly to get out of a suffocatingly regimented home, she has won just about everybody over, because she is so cool, frank, funny, self-effacing, and genuinely nice.

And because she has chosen a really noble cause, instead of a divisive one.

To general admiration, she is trying to slow child kidnappings and kidnapping-deaths, which are at epidemic levels not least in Utah where the polygamists want second, third and fourth wives and are in the habit of helping themselves.

She has systematized her advice - a number of pointers for kidnap victims to help them come out alive, and a number of pointers for parents, police and political leaders which end up in law and handbooks and training and are filling a real void. She unquestionably is saving lives.

3. Bottom Line

In contrast, what is Knox’s cause? Fanning bigotry and trashing Italy and Italian justice through extensive lies? Mischaracterizing why she is a convicted felon who served three years and nefariously escaped much worse? Demonizing hundreds while seeking to make herself a saint?

So. To best meet their students’ lifetime needs, out of these two, who was it Roanoke College management chooses to expose them to? Really? Amanda Knox?!?!

Friday, December 29, 2017

Why Did The Mainstream Media Enable A Takeover By The Conspiracy Nuts?

Rampant Conspiracies

This condemnation is written in light of the ever-growing wave of translated transcripts.

They show how extremely good the investigation and case at trial really were. And how extremely wrong were too much of the press. Why did mainstream media organisations allow so many conspiracy nuts to spout their unsubstantiated and ridiculously far-fetched claims?

Mainstream media organisations have known for a while that the general public has an insatiable appetite for documentaries about allegedly innocent people who have been convicted of murders they didn’t commit.

A cursory glance at the selection of true crime documentaries on Netflix provides evidence of the appeal of this specific genre. Amanda Knox, West of Memphis and Making of a Murderer are all hugely popular.

The Serial podcast about the Adnan Syed/Hae Mine Lee case is one the most downloaded podcast of all time. Sarah Koenig presented the case from the defence’s perspective and concluded there isn’t enough evidence to convict Adnan Syed of Hae Min Lee’s murder.

The juries in the respective cases above listened to the prosecution and defence present their cases in court.

They weighed the testimonies of the experts and witnesses for both sides and they were all convinced that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, Damian Echols, Jesse Misskelley and Jason Baldwin and Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey and Adnan Syed were all involved in exceptionally brutal murders.

There is damning evidence against all the people mentioned above. But many journalists don’t want the facts to get in the way of a good story.

Among The Worst

Paul Ciolino admitted in a question-and-answer session about the Meredith Kercher case at Seattle University that CBS News didn’t care whether someone was innocent. The only thing they care about is the story.

I work for CBS News. I want to tell you one thing about CBS. We don’t care if you did it. We don’t care if you’re innocent. We like a story. We want to do a story. That’s all we care about.

It was recognised as far back as 1999 in the legal profession that journalists have an inclination to slant their reports in favour of the defendants.

P. Cassell, “The guilty and the ‘innocent’: An examination of alleged cases of wrongful conviction from false confessions”, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, 1999:

...academic research on miscarriages should not rely on media descriptions of the evidence against defendants. Journalists will all too often slant their reports in the direction of discovering “news” by finding that an innocent person has been wrongfully convicted.

The default position of mainstream media organisations in the US was that Amanda Knox is innocent despite the fact that the vast majority of journalists who covered the case weren’t in a position to know this - they hadn’t regularly attended the court hearings or read a single page of any of the official court reports.

The news organizations in Seattle was so partisan in their support of Amanda Knox that they were effectively just mouthpieces for the PR firm of David Marriott that was hired by Curt Knox to influence a credulous and naive local audience who felt duty-bound to support the hometown girl.

Lawyer Anne Bremner couldn’t resist the temptation to use the case to promote herself in the media. Judge Michael Heavey was recruited so he could use his position as a judge to sway the public.

The vast majority of people in Seattle were kept completely ignorant of the basic facts of the case by all their newspapers and all their TV news, so they were not in a position to realize that both Bremner and Heavey got basic facts wrong.

Many American journalists who reported on the case hold the ridiculous belief that the US legal system is the only competent and just one in the world, and that no US citizen charged by a foreign court with any crime can possibly be guilty of it or ever receive a fair trial.

The claim that Amanda Knox was being framed for a murder she didn’t commit by corrupt officials in a foreign country by her supporters was manna from heaven for mainstream media organizations in America.

It was a sensational story that was guaranteed to enrage and entertain a gullible American public in equal measure.

It’s not possible to ascertain precisely who the story that Amanda Knox was being framed for a murder she didn’t commit by a corrupt legal system originated from.

But it almost certainly came from someone within or very close to Amanda Knox’s family. Jan Goodwin was one of the first journalists to make the claim after interviewing Edda Mellas for Marie Claire in 2008.

Studying abroad should have been a grand adventure. Instead, Amanda Knox has spent a year in jail, accused by a corrupt legal system of murdering her roommate.

Jan Goodwin didn’t offer any evidence to substantiate her claim that the Italy legal system is corrupt, presumably the word of Edda Mellas was good enough for her.

It transpired that the word of Edda Mellas and ex-husband Curt and Amanda Knox’s supporters was good enough for the vast majority of journalists who covered the case on both sides of Atlantic.

They unquestiongly accepted everything they heard without bothering to do any fact-checking whatsoever. Time and again not a single investigator or court official in Perugia was interviewed.

This explains the reason why so many articles about the case are riddled with factual errors and well-known PR lies.

Other media organisations wanted to get in on the act and claim there was dastardly plot to frame Amanda Knox for Meredith’s murder.

CBS News allowed a couple of zany conspiracy nuts to spout their nonsense without providing any evidence to support their wild-eyed claims. Here’s Paul Ciolino again:

This is a lynching ... this is a lynching that is happening in modern day Europe right now and it’s happening to an American girl who has no business being charged with anything. (Paul Ciolino, CBS News.)

Here is Peter van Sant.

We have concluded that Amanda Knox is being railroaded… I promise you’re going to want to send the 82nd Airborne Division over to Italy to get this girl out of jail. (Peter Van Sant, CBS News.)

The reporting was invariably tinged with xenophobic sentiments. Italy was portrayed as some backward Third World country whose police force was comically incompetent. Here’s CBS’s Doug Longhini.

But in the case of Amanda Knox, the American student convicted of murder in Italy last December, the Via Tuscolana apparently failed to separate fantasy from truth. Too many Italian investigators rivaled Fellini as they interpreted, and reinterpreted facts, to suit their own, surrealistic script.” (Doug Longhini, CBS News).

WHERE in all the transcripts is that proved? Doug Longhini’s pompous and pseudo-intellectual comments are meaningless and lack any substance, although he was no doubt very pleased himself for his “clever” reference to Fellini.

Ironically, he was unable to separate fantasy from truth when he produced the error-ridden American Girl, Italian Nightmare for CBS News. The documentary includes the familiar PR lies about satanic rituals, the 14-hour interrogation sessions and Knox not knowing Rudy Guede.

Lawyer John Q Kelly seemingly forgot the Latin maxim “semper necessitas probandi incumbit ei qui agit” - “he who asserts must prove” - when he claimed that Knox and Sollecito were being railroaded and evidence against them had been manipulated.

My thoughts, Larry, it’s probably the most egregious international railroading of two innocent young people that I have ever seen. This is actually a public lynching based on rank speculation, and vindictiveness. It’s just a nightmare what these parents are going through and what these young adults are going through also.

“There’s been injustice here. There’s been injustice in other countries but this is just beyond the pale. The manipulation of evidence; the most unfavorable inferences drawn from the most common of circumstances and conduct was just a gross injustice here.”

(John Q Kelly, CNN).

Judy Bachrach was also allowed to claim there was a conspiracy to Amanda Knox on CNN.

Everyone knew from the beginning that the prosecutor had it in for Amanda Knox, that the charges are pretty much trumped up…

From the beginning this was carefully choreographed, they wanted to find her guilty, they’ve kept her in jail for two years even before trial and they did find her guilty. This is the way Italian justice is done. If you’re accused, you’re guilty.

There isn’t an ounce of hard evidence against her and all of Italy should be ashamed actually.” (Judy Bachrach, CNN).

Arguably the craziest conspiracy nut - and the competition is fierce - is the former FBI agent Steve Moore in early retirement.

He claimed the Perugian police, Guilano Mignini, Dr Patrizia Stefanoni, Edgardo Giobbi the head of the Violent Crimes Unit in Rome, Judge Massei, and the Italian Supreme Court were all part of a dastardly plot to frame Amanda Knox.

He claimed the following on his blog.

For this to happen, though, pompous prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, forensic perjurer Patrizia Stefanoni, and mind-reading detective Edgardo Giobbi (and others), must be prosecuted for their corruption. The judge who rubber stamped the lies in the first trial, Massei, must be also called to the bar of justice-or back to law school.

Paul Callan: “And now … and they (the Perugian police) got the Supreme Court of Italy involved in this conspiracy? You know, that’s like saying that … [Steve Moore interrupts]”

Steve Moore: “Yes, they do. Yes, they do. You are being naive. You don’t understand the Italian system. You don’t understand it. You are defending something you don’t understand.”

Barbie Nadeau reported his claim that evidence was manipulated for The Daily Beast.

The evidence that was presented in trial was flawed, it was manipulated.

Steve Moore has never provided any evidence to support his wild-eyed hysterical claims there was a huge conspiracy involving a prosecutor, different police departments, Judge Massei and judges at the Italian Supreme Court to frame Amanda Knox for Meredith’s murder.

It’s no wonder TV legal analyst Paul Callan was smiling, desperately trying not to burst out laughing, when he discussed the case with Moore on CNN.

Moore provided irrefutable proof in the short time he was on CNN that he is ignorant of the basic facts of the case, and that he hasn’t read any of the official court reports.

He falsely claimed “the DNA that they said was Raffaele’s was actually a woman’s DNA.”

No expert claimed this at the trial. Sollecito’s DNA was identified by two separate DNA tests. Of the 17 loci tested in the sample, Sollecito’s profile matched 17 out of 17. David Balding, a professor of Statistical Genetics at University College London, analysed the DNA evidence against Sollecito and concluded it was “very strong”.

He told Erin Burnett: “The second trial proved with independent experts that the DNA that they claim was the victim’s was not on the knife.”

A number of forensic experts - Dr Stefanoni, Dr Biondo, Professor Novelli, Professor Torricelli, and Luciano Garofano - have all confirmed that sample 36B which was extracted from the blade of the knife was Meredith’s DNA. The independent experts did not carry out a test on this sample.

In England there were deranged conspiracy nuts claiming Amanda Knox was framed too.

Amy Jenkins bizarrely claimed in The Independent that Knox and Sollecito were the victims of a miscarriage of justice because Knox was a young woman, the Italians didn’t like the fact Knox snogged her boyfriend and someone needed to save face or something.

The truth is, Amanda Knox’s great crime was to be a young woman – but mainly it was to be a young woman who didn’t know how to behave. She was 20 years old, she was suffering from shock, and she was in a foreign country. She was interrogated with no lawyer and no translator present. She made a phoney confession.

Clearly no saint, she wasn’t a Madonna either. That’ll make her a whore then. She snogged her boyfriend; she was slightly provocative on Facebook; she turned an inappropriate cartwheel. In a Catholic country, it’s clearly not such a leap to go from there to stabbing your room-mate in the neck during a violent sexual assault – because that’s the leap the prosecution made.

To save face, Knox and her poor boyfriend had to be somehow levered into the frame. As the whole juggernaut of injustice chugged on it became harder and harder for the six lay judges who acted as a jury to destroy a case that had been constructed over two years by prosecutors who were their close working colleagues.” (Amy Jenkins, The Independent).

Conclusion: Read The Docs

More and more the documents prove that all of them have been wrong. The conspiracy theorists predictably haven’t provided one iota of evidence that there was conspiracy to frame Amanda Knox for Meredith’s murder.

I suspect the producers at mainstream media organisations like CBS News and CNN knew there never was any conspiracy to frame Amanda Knox all along, but they didn’t get care because they wanted a sensational story.

Too many people within the media perversely see murder as entertainment. Rather than providing balanced and factually accurate coverage of murder cases they want to outrage and entertain the masses with melodramatic stories of conspiracies involving corrupt prosecutors and cops who want to frame innocent people for murders they didn’t commit instead.

We shouldn’t be surprised by the popularity of Making of a Murderer on Netflix. It filled a vacuum after Knox and Sollecito were acquitted in 2015. I have no doubts that journalists from mainstream media organisations are currently looking for the next alleged case of someone being framed or railroaded for a murder they didn’t commit.

1. First Choice For Trophy Victim?

Clearly not the inconvenient Sollecito or Guede who she almost forgets to mention - although Italians almost universally blame Knox for conning that hapless pair into the attack, wielding the fatal blow, and wrecking their lives as a result.

Martha Duncan as we already know has read none at all of the vast trove of court documents.

So she will presumably be surprised that Sollecito made this statement in writing to Supervising Magistrate Matteini, just 48 hours after their arrest.

I never want to see Amanda again. Above all, it is her fault we are here.

In really weird contrast Martha Duncan comes across as besotted, even blinded by Knox. She works overtime to identify herself with her little darling.

Clearly it is KNOX and ONLY Knox that Martha Duncan sees as the victim here. Wow does Duncan go the extra mile for her.

2. Join The Line Martha Duncan

This is not the first time that a faux feminist has performed contortions with the truth to make this case all about Me-Me-Me & Amanda Knox versus All Those Mean Men.

So did many of the suspiciously clinging Amanda Knox groupies - though some woke up and took off on her. Remember Maddy Paxton? Long gone.

Who does the best work at taking these faux feminists down a peg?

No surprise here. Invariably other women. So many women simply dont trust Knox or like her. Rather more women than men dislike her in our experience and say so.

For example among others media favorites like Nancy Grace and Wendy Murphy and Ann Coulter were scathing about Knox and the groupies on TV shows. Almost all the most objective reporters have been women. We’ve depended on them a lot.

Here are two who were pretty scathing in correcting the opportunists and dupes.

3. Selene Nelson Decries Faux Feminism

In May the Huffington Post published an article titled Where Are All The Feminists? Why Amanda Knox’s Story Is About More Than Murder. Lisa Marie Basile begins her piece: “Amanda Knox is innocent of murder,” before going on to suggest that Knox was targeted only because she was “sexually active and good looking”. The reason Basile cares? Because she is “a human and a feminist.”

I am also a human and a feminist. I too believe that Knox suffered inexcusably sexist treatment by the media. I also happen to believe that she is unequivocally guilty. As someone who has followed this case for many years, I take offence to the misinformation that riddles Basile’s article. Where, Basile wonders as she laments Knox’s fate, are all the feminists?

We’re right here, Lisa. Basile’s implication - that those convinced of Knox’s guilt do so because of gender prejudice - is laughable. Not only does it demonstrate astonishing ignorance of the facts of this case, but Basile’s entire article is suggestive of the role her own prejudice plays in forming her opinion of guilt or innocence.

Basile is correct that the issue of sexism towards Knox should be addressed. Continually portrayed as a sexual object by the media, the fact that Knox deigned to enjoy casual sex was held up as an indication of her deviancy, and when the press discovered that she kept a vibrator in full view in the bathroom, you could almost hear the collective intake of breath.

The media’s unwavering determination to paint Kercher and Knox as Madonna/Whore figures is also troubling. While Knox has been portrayed as manipulative and sadistic, Kercher has become virginal, passive, saint-like. This is unsettling. Would Kercher’s death be any less tragic had she shared Knox’s penchant for casual sex? Does a woman’s sexuality make her guilty? Does her presumed virginity redeem her? Kercher was an innocent victim, regardless of her sexuality; she does not need to be canonised for this murder case to be any more tragic than it already is.

However, as shameful as the prejudiced handling of the “Foxy Knoxy” persona was, it has no bearing on the evidence against her. The vast majority of people who believe Knox is guilty do not figure her sexuality into their reasoning. Her sex life has zero bearing on my belief of her guilt, nor, I doubt, the opinion of the 20+ judges who have found her guilty. Her two convictions have nothing to do with vibrators, Satanism, cartwheels or kisses, but the mountain of evidence against her. Evidence Basile simply ignores.

To claim, “There is no credible evidence” against Knox is absurd. It is actually ludicrous. Basile dismisses 10,000 pages of it as neither credible nor realistic without even acknowledging it, imparting a string of passionate pro-Knox statements that are criminally unsubstantiated.

What Basile misses is the point that were Knox unattractive, let alone a minority or male, she would have a fraction of the support she has. People want to explain the evidence away, or ignore it completely as Basile does, precisely because they don’t want to think a nice pretty white girl could commit a crime like this. Basile has conveniently neglected the fact that Knox’s femininity and attractiveness have helped her far more than hindered her, because in order to believe Amanda Knox, you have to overlook the following:

Her DNA mixed with Kercher’s blood in five spots; Knox’s fresh blood, and Kercher’s blood, smeared in the bathroom; Sollecito’s DNA on Kercher’s bra; Knox’s DNA on the handle of the murder weapon, Kercher’s on the blade; the footprints matching the bare feet of Knox that contain her DNA mixed with Kercher’s; the staged crime scene with glass on TOP of the clothes and a near impossible window entry point; Knox’s false accusation of her employer; her total lack of alibi and multiple lies; the phone and computer records that prove dishonesty; her utterly implausible account of the morning after the murder; the frantic call she made to her mother in the middle of the night that she “forgets” making; her email home; the witness testimony; the fact Knox knew multiple details about the murder she couldn’t possibly have known; the evidence suggesting Kercher’s body was moved and the scene staged hours after her death when Rudy Guede, the third person convicted of the murder, was long gone.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of evidence but is just an indication of how embarrassing these “no evidence” claims are. Blind ignorance of the subtleties of this case seems to have spread across a great deal of America like some kind of mental epidemic. What has prompted this trust of Knox, so entirely out of place considering she is a convicted liar and slanderer? Even the 2011 appeal that acquitted her (and was subsequently thrown out by the Supreme Court for being inaccurate, illogical and biased) increased her sentence in this respect. The urge to believe the Italian courts have now twice convicted two young people without evidence is shocking and reeks of xenophobia.

Basile then tries to defend Knox’s “false confession”: “We should remember that Knox was interrogated for many hours without food or water [and] slapped and screamed at in Italian,” she writes sympathetically. What nonsense. It is a fact that Knox’s interview was at most two hours long; minimal research would have told Basile that the torturous, lengthy interrogation story was utterly fabricated. So fabricated that her parents face criminal defamation charges for claiming otherwise.

More importantly, this wasn’t a false confession now was it; it was the flagrant false accusation of an innocent man. As soon as Knox learned of Sollecito’s alibi withdrawal for her (another fact conveniently ignored by her supporters and Basile), out came the finger of blame, the same finger she kept pointed at her employer for over two weeks while he languished in jail. Two weeks. This was not a “false confession” blurted out on impulse: Knox let an innocent man suffer for a fortnight.

She may argue this: “There was no hair, fibre, footprint, shoe print, handprint, palm print, fingerprint, sweat, saliva, DNA of Amanda Knox in the room where Meredith Kercher was killed,” as her attorney stated. “That tells you unassailably that she is innocent.”

Sounds compelling. That is until you realise that applying that logic to all the evidence, rather than just that which incriminates Knox, presents quite the conundrum:

“There was no hair, fibre, footprint, shoe print, handprint, palm print, fingerprint, sweat, saliva, DNA of Rudy Guede in the blood-stained bathroom where there is the blood and DNA of Knox. That tells you unassailably that Guede did not do the crime alone.”

Or this:

“There was no hair, fibre, footprint, shoe print, handprint, palm print, fingerprint, sweat, saliva, of Knox in the bedroom where she slept…That tells you unassailably that Knox never even lived in the cottage.”

Aside from the inaccuracies throughout, what grates most about Basile’s piece is the title, the suggestion that feminists have failed Knox. What total short-sightedness; what utter blindness to the sensitivities of this case. Feminists owe Knox nothing and to suggest we do is ignorant and insulting. She had a hard time in the press, yes, but frankly it’s not the point. I too have been angered by what the media too often chooses to focus on, but for entirely opposing reasoning: it allows her supporters to deflect the actual issue. It allows them to gloss over the unequivocally incriminating evidence that Amanda Knox either murdered Meredith Kercher herself or, at the very least, played a devastating part.

Her “Foxy Knoxy” status is an irrelevance. No one has “failed” her. She has failed herself, and she fails the Kercher family each and every day she protests her innocence. There is only one female victim here - Meredith Kercher - and how dare Basile allow Knox’s PR spin, and her own wilful ignorance, to conceal that.

4.Law Expert Nicki In Milan Decries Faux Feminism

14 June 2009. Posting from Milan where we also have been watching Knox testify in Italian.

Here are just three of the disbelieving headlines on the testimony that have been appearing in the Italian press.

All of Amanda’s wrong moves (La Stampa)

Amanda growls but Patrick bites (Il Giornale)

Amanda: I am innocent. But many “I don’t remembers” start popping up (ANSA)

As many of us were expecting, Amanda’s testimony has backfired. She came across not as confident but arrogant, not as sweet but testy, not as true but a fake who has memorized a script, an actress who is playing a part but not well enough to fool the public.

It is true that the Italian media and public opinion in general have not been very benign with Knox. But not for the reasons that the American media seem to want to push.

Let’s make it clear, Amanda Knox is not on trial because Italians are unaccustomed to or even “jealous” of her freedom and lifestyle… The first time we read these “explanations” we found them quite laughable.

But for many or most Italians the initial amusement has now given way to a profound irritation. Amanda Knox’s lifestyle is shared by hundreds of thousands of Italian girls, who like partying and sex as much as she does - or even more - and they live a happy carefree life with no fear of being perceived as “bad girls.” They behave no differently from any other girl of the same age in America or in any other Western country.

Dear American media, welcome to the 21st century and to globalization! Please put aside pseudo-romantic and passè vision of a country where all men chase American girls because Italian women are not as approachable for “cultural” reasons: Italian men are into foreign girls no more but no less than Italian girls are into foreign boys.

They generally greatly like Americans because of their great interest and curiosity for a country and its people that many Italian youngsters have only known through books or movies. Amanda Knox is not on trial because she is American and therefore too “emancipated”. She could even be from the North Pole as far as Italians are concerned.

What really matters to them is to find the truth about Meredith’s murder and to do real justice for her terrible death. Italians don’t much like Amanda primarily because they perceive her as a manipulative liar, who is suspected of having committed a heinous crime for which there is a whole stack of evidence - and they perceive this even more-so after this last week’s court hearings.

In addition, the US media’s seemingly endless bashing of the Italian justice system, and of the whole country, most recently by CBS and ABC, has definitely made things worse.

The Italian police are NOT known to be particularly violent - although, agreed, it may happen when they’re dealing with violent males suspects from Eastern Europe or Africa, or in the streets when they have to deal with a riot. Violence is NEVER used with white, female college students from Italy, America or elsewhere.

And Italy is a sovereign state with a great juridical tradition. Receiving condescending lectures by the media of a country where the death penalty is still applied in many states comes across as more than insulting - it is utterly ridiculous. Before you judge the “backwardness” of the Italian justice system, you should at least first read Cesare Beccaria’s amazingly humane Of Crimes And Punishments (written in 1764) and perhaps you’ll reconsider.

If the American media just cannot understand that there are alternatives to the “American way ”, that may not be so bad after all. But they should at least show some respect for a foreign, sovereign state and its people.

If the media can’t even manage to do so - and they really want to help Amanda - the best thing to do now is to go quiet and let the Italian justice work at its pace and according to its own principles. If Amanda is only guilty of arrogance, callousness and narcissism, she will be free soon.

Dear American followers of Meredith and, for that matter, also friends of Amanda Knox. May I speak right to you, and right past the media?

There has been no character assassination, no demonization, no great wave of hate and revenge, no mad prosecutor, no Satan theory of the crime, no invented evidence, and no massive bumbling.

5. TJMK Poster Hopeful Decries Faux Feminism

1. Late Joiner Of The Dwindling Knox Parade

A week ago in the Huffington Post Lisa Marie Basile asked why feminists are not storming the barricades for Knox.

The gullible Lisa Marie Basile had obviously swallowed whole Knox’s avid self-promotion and serial demonizing to create a muddled article at best, confused about feminism, poorly researched on the case, nasty to good Italians who are in no easy position to defend themselves, and hugely disrespectful to the real victim.

I want to explain what real feminists are seeing that the faux feminist Lisa Marie Basile has managed to miss. Above all feminism means justice to women, and the many women who post on and support sites like TJMK are upholding justice, for the only woman who counts in this case.

2. An Attack With Indisputable Sex Aspects

Remember, Meredith is the innocent woman who was slain by an undeniably jealous and unhinged fellow female who used two males as her henchmen. No Italian court disagrees with that, and Italian courts (except when hijacked as with Hellmann) are extremely careful. .

The victim was left partly nude and in a staged position on the floor to suggest to whoever found the body that it was a sexual attack. Has Ms. Basile forgotten this actually was a sex crime for which all three were charged and sentenced? This surely opened the door for examination of the sexual behavior of the former suspects.

There was no “gendered expectation” among Italians investigating this crime, only a ” truth expectation.”

Articles like “We Are All Amanda Knox” which Basile mentioned try to normalize and even exult in Amanda’s behavior as a wild woman, but she is not at all the norm there.

Raffaele had led a more restrained sexual lifestyle, actually more typical of a coy young woman than a randy man. Raffaele, in keeping perhaps with the church doctrines in which he had been reared, had not taken any sexual partners except possibly for one, other than in his extensive fantasy life.

Guede’s sex act on Meredith was never in question, as he left behind his DNA to prove he had no boundaries. His nuisance behavior hitting on girls in nightclubs in Perugia was fully discussed, and he got no breaks from anyone on any front.

Knox herself bragged about her liberation ethics and fast work with men. Nobody else turned her into a “filthy, sex-obsessed slut” but herself. The media mostly rather neutrally reported the facts, and even when her track record of casual sex became clearly documented, it was never made a focal point of the trial at all.

What was focused on was Knox’s alibi, her lies that her boss had killed her “friend” and her phone records. Knox was under the microscope for her DNA being found mixed with Meredith’s blood in five locations of the cottage.

Knox was not questioned in court about how many boyfriends she had, or her one-night stands. She was never ever questioned about her sex partners or asked to list them, simply about what males had visited the house who might have had an interest in Meredith.

Again, this after all was staged to look like a sex crime, and had signs of sexual activity on the body. The Italians were hardly rushing off on detours for false reasons of prurient interests.

3. Morphing Into A New Knox Persona

For several years starting in Seattle Knox had adopted a dangerous and very irresponsible lifestyle, which she first bragged about but has tried to back away from since she left Italy. She pretends now to have a monogamous relationship with James Terrano.

Now Amanda manages to visit the television studios in a somber manner without cartwheels or doing splits and laughing. Amazing how serious she has become about her own tragedy while telling it to microphones for the world to hear after giggling about Meredith’s death and sticking her tongue out sitting on a male lap in the police station, making fun of it all when it wasn’t her death involved.

Amanda’s “offness” as Ms. Basile refers to it raised a red flag of disrespect for the victim, which was why it was significant. Her lack of dramatic weeping outside of the cottage was never an issue.

Italians are very savvy. They are hardly the logic challenged numbskulls that Ms. Basile seems to fear they’ve been painted. Her hints that a godfearing Mignini is somehow inept shows her own bias to the godless and ruleless, the lawless and the stupid. I won’t even go into issues of spiritual faith, it is too divisive. Surely we can all agree with the mandate “Thou shalt not kill.”

4. There Was No Witch Hunt Or Inquisition

Sadly Ms. Basile has bought into Knox’s warren of lies about “forced confessions” (in actuality accusations of an innocent man!), and the cleanup that was somehow “impossible” and a “tortured five days of brutal interrogation”.

All have again and again been proven false and didnt stop her serving a three year sentence. Amanda Knox was challenged on her alibi, the presence of her blood at the scene, and her ownership of a key to the non-broken-into cottage.

She herself brought forward her alcohol and drug use, and blamed it for intoxication and lost memory for the night in question.

To rid herself of her most fundamental misconception about Amanda Knox, Lisa Marie Basile should read this series on the interrogation hoax which Knox still pushes and Basile gullibly swallowed.

5. Why Respect The Virtues Of Sexual Purity?

Modern Italian women are more fast, colorful, liberal and worldly than Americans may realize. They certainly dress a lot better. Naturally they try to live out their Catholic faith as best they can, even if we all fail to meet our highest ideals.

At the same time Italians tend to arrive at very close loving enduring families. How women prepare themselves is a very big component of this success - a success which Americans could use a lot more of.

Here are some practical reasons why Italians value sexual responsibility, which have nothing to do with faith, religion, or patriarchy, but only the safety of innocent children.

Italians as all cultures do, prefer women who are cautious and circumspect with their sexuality, as a sign of the woman’s self-discipline, a natural caution toward males as a survival instinct which she will pass on to her offspring.

A female’s self-discipline in sexual matters is a hallmark of her personal self-respect and a sign she is able to envision her larger future as the wife of a dignified man.

Most such men hope to marry a woman clean of physical disease who also carries little emotional baggage from multiple sexual affairs and heartbreaks with multiple men.

The fewer of those encounters before marriage, the better chance the children she bears him will be in no doubt of their parentage.

This is supremely important to the man, who will be working to pass on his entire life’s work and heritage to the children he feels he has truly engendered and who carry his genes and his bloodline.

The children will more likely have a safe lifestyle of similar circumspect behavior and self-discipline inculcated by their mother who will be a large influence on their morals.

The mother’s reputation can add or detract from her children’s social position and can expand their opportunities as people of trustworthy background or its opposite.

There can be a safety aspect. A woman who has had a raunchy past may have unfinished business with various men who may possibly come back into the area, begin to harass, taunt, spread rumors, or even physically threaten and cause difficulty for a new husband’s family, suspicious that perhaps one of the offspring is his own.

In this day of twitter, instagram, Facebook, email, and YouTube, sordid rumors that were once easily squelched now become known worldwide on digital media.

It is simple logic that if a woman while in the heyday of her youth and good looks in the full bloom of health and optimism, could not make attachments or command loyalty and devotion despite going all the way to sleeping with a man, that this person somehow has her radar broken or uses poor judgment.

Perhaps she simply prefers the lust for pleasure over saving herself for marriage to the man who would one day do her the most good and with whom she would develop a lifetime relationship. At any rate, she may have a sex drive that overwhelms her judgment. It may motivate her even after marriage, to break the ties of marriage.

The husband of such a woman will also inherit her personal history and may grow to resent behaviors in her past that might tarnish his future and their children’s.

This is merely a common sense outlook on why it is smart to abstain from sexual intimacies with lots of strangers who have no ongoing goodwill toward the person whose body they use, nor any commitment to the offspring of such union financially or physically.

A woman’s body at any time could conceive despite using birth control.

In each normal sex act she takes the risk of facing the horrendous consequences of pregnancy without emotional support, finances, and then she faces 15 to 20 years of her life required to raise the child while trying to introduce him to various father figures who may never feel the natural bond to the child that a married father would.

Talk to single moms anywhere, their path is no piece of cake. To choose this hard path by one’s own lack of self-discipline and lack of insight is a foolish act. Society is left buying the diapers and formula and helping the exhausted young mother survive her day job and come home to night feedings.

In other words, all the hard duties of childcare are foisted upon those who didn’t ask for them, who may be tired from raising their own legitimate offspring, a hard enough job with two parents committed and working on the children’s behalf.

Social services are stretched hard enough when emergencies, accidents, death or desertion of the male parent leave women and children stranded and abandoned in financial straits.

To jump over this cliff by choice or lack of foresight is foolish of a woman who knows a child needs two devoted parents. It’s self-absorbed, pleasure loving behavior with refusal to delay gratification.

It is selfish to the community.

Governments have to chase down these fathers for non-support of their own children.

Taxpayers and others who had no joy of the sex act or the union however brief it was, are forced for decades by welfare agencies (and basic compassion) to fork out child support dollars for strangers, rather than see the infant starve.

The child of these hasty and ill-fated unions already may face for a lifetime the hardship of feeling unwanted by his father. He or she may suffer embarrassment at his mom’s unwise youthful choices that were predicated on her lack of logic or poor self-control and willful betrayal of her children’s best future for one of difficulty and poverty.

Where is the love? It was love for self, not others.

An aside: Thank goodness God in heaven does love us all, no matter what our parents made a mess of. All can be resolved in peace and love, but the path of natural life will be much tougher and more limited when the child will not learn problem solving skills from two parents of the opposite sex nor have the benefit of the greater security. “Two are better than one, for they have more reward for their labor.”

6. Precisely WHO Are Today’s Feminists?

There are many forms of feminism. Oddly Ms. Basile is determined to argue for the imparting of partiality and favoritism to a woman who has been found to have killed another woman using two males as proxies. Ms. Basile’s biased view is based on Amanda Knox being wrongfully condemned because Basile thinks she is attractive and sexually free.

But this never happened. There was hard proof against her in DNA in three rooms and a corridor in the house and on a knife handle and upper blade..

Where are all the feminists? Those who have their facts right are allowing justice to take its course, that’s where. Justice is blind, and does not favor the pretty over the ugly or the rich over the poor. Yet all these things may be factors in the cause of any crime.

There are as many flavors of feminist as there are ideologies in the world. Consider this list.

Liberal feminism

Radical feminism

Conservative feminism

Ecofeminists

Separatist feminism

Materialist feminism

Socialist feminism

Marxist feminism

Anarcha-feminists

Feminist punk movement

Feminism as a social construction

Lipstick feminism

There are dozens and dozens. There are Christian feminists (I am one). All are equal before God, Mary is the mother of the Church, she was allowed to usher in the Savior of mankind. God uses women to restore what women through Eve lost.

Look at Meredith’s heel being exposed under the duvet. (see Genesis 3:15 prophecy from God that the seed of the woman would crush Satan’s head, but Satan would bruise his heel.)

Meredith was even worried she’d packed no socks when she first came to Perugia, and she told friends she hoped her dad would bring some, revealing concern about uncovered feet. .

There are the early feminist suffragettes who worked for women’s right to vote and birth control. The second wave campaigned for legal and social and political equality for women. Equal work for equal pay. The second wave feminists declared, “The personal is political”.

The second wave in about 30 years splintered off into various feminist camps divided on the issues of pornography *is it exploitative of women or a celebration of sexuality?, male equality versus misandry, homosexuality, the racial issues of women of color, the cultural (some Islamic, some Jewish, some WASP, etc.) women in developed countries versus poverty stricken nations.

Feminism is not a monolithic entity. Arguments abound whether we’re now living in a postfeminist society, whether gender equality has been achieved.

Then there’s third wave feminism.

7. Feminism In The Case Of Meredith’s Murder

The truth of whether a person committed a crime rises above all of these feminist ideologies. All of them. It is not a traditional role problem, it is a problem of no respect for Meredith’s particular life.

If she had been male, the bullies would not have dared.

So it was her femaleness that made her a target. Ironically her vulnerability was caused by another female’s envy and anger management issues and extremely irresponsible lifestyle.

Friday, November 04, 2016

Nick Pisa was among those who filed court reports objectively and very fast

1. Overview Of This Series

This is the first of three posts describing how in the real world various arms of the media performed.

The Netflix report showed British reporter Nick Pisa relishing some early headlines, and a scene where the solving of the crime by the national and Perugia police is announced to the press.

From those seemingly damning episodes, the audience is encouraged to make the vast extrapolation that it was a voracious media and an overzealous police that drove the whole case.

Also that this was fundamentally unfair to a self-effacing, publicity-shy Knox, and that it caused the verdicts to go the “wrong” way - twice, first in the 2009 Massei trial, and second in the 2013-14 Nencini appeal.

2. The Real Police “Slant”

The police announcement - typical of such announcements in the US and UK when the local population is freaked out - was NOT made simply to win points for the police or to isolate and slam Knox (Sollecito and at that point Patrick were also described as suspects in the crime).

There had not been a single murder in Perugia for many years. This murder was reported (rightly) as singularly depraved and (rightly) as a pack attack with knives.

Many people could not sleep at night. The immediate effect upon Perugia and in particular its huge student population (over 20,000) of Meredith’s death was that many men and women, especially women as a sex crime was (rightly) described, did indeed become freaked out.

Literally thousands began to leave town.

Both the town managers and the university managers were quite desperately demanding an early break or major assurances to stem this tide. The police announcement did in fact do that.

Thereafter the investigators went on about their work for the better part of a year, and the documentation is huge - it was put at 10,000 pages early on but is now substantially larger than that.

Here is one example of just how much work was done after the police calmed things down.

At the infamous “interrogation” of Knox on 5-6 November 2007 she in fact worked on a list of seven names of people who might be able to help the police. The police took that list and they tracked down all seven, and the cross-checking of their accounts went on for months.

Complicated, of course, because Knox most heavily pointed at Patrick, and used the list to point away from herself. Her drug dealer, which police soon found out about, did not appear on the list though he had repeatedly been at her house.

3. The Real Media “Slant”

In the next post, we shall show how there really was a huge slant - but not what Netflix depicts.

All of the Netflix’s global demonization of the media flows from Nick Pisa’s few deprecating words. No extensive checking of his reports is seen.

No Italian media disposition was examined at all - the Italian media was by far the most likely to have an effect on a jury of Italian speakers who are encouraged by the system to do some research.

Netflix maybe omitted this for their own convenience - there was little or no slant to point to at all.

Italian media reported methodically before and during trial and long thereafter on what the US and UK media mostly did not - all the crucial process steps pre-trial were reported in Italy but largely ignored by the UK and US press.

In fact try to find even ONE instance where a UK reporter writing in English for an English audience in late 2007 got inside an entire panel of Italian judges’ heads late in 2009, and again in 2014, which is what Netflix would like you to believe.

4. Nick Pisa’s Real Reports On The Case

Fortunately for the hard truth, what we often called the “Rome pool” of foreign correspondents included nearly a dozen exceptionally talented reporters (those posted in other countries usually are the cream of the crop).

Thanks to their very hard work and their incessant costly travel to Perugia, we were able to repost on the 2008 and 2009 developments with a scope far beyond what any one “man on the spot” could do (we did have several of those too).

Free-lancer Nick Pisa in fact reported from the court for a lot of media outlets in the UK, not simply one. He was the only non-Italian reporter to pretty consistently have a cameraman along, for his reports for Sky News, and some of his good video reports still show.

This kind of fast, comprehensive coverage badly rattled the Knoxes and Mellases and their camps and especially diminished their PR, and they openly displayed angry aggression at times.

We’ll describe in the next post their desperate attempts to demonize all of the few reporters they did not have on a chain as coming straight from hell.

We have carried a total of 35 of Nick Pisa’s reports, in whole or in part. Check them all out below. Do you see ANY bias here?

1 Knox’s Own Book Says Differently

Inadmissibility issues aside, the film is blatantly contradicted by many claims WITHIN KNOX’S OWN BOOK. Links below are for my extended series “Revenge of the Knox” on close to 1000 defamations and lies.

I rated the book as 90-95% bullshit. There is a reason it was not 100%—because there are truthful parts of it which contradict other parts. Research anyone?

Click here for post:Revenge Of The Knox: How Knox’s Body Of Lies Headed For The Dark Side (Series Overview)

Click here for post:Revenge Of The Knox, The Smear-All Book: We Get Down To Nailing ALL Her Invented Claims #1

(L) AK criticizes Italian Authorities for being dishonest, but admits to fabricating parts of this “memoir”

(M) And on, and on, and on ....

3. Contradictions Just In Author’s Note At Back

Admission #1: Knox Admits she Didn’t Write WTBH

[Author’s Note] ” .... I wouldn’t have been able to write this memoir without Linda Kulman. Somehow, with her Post-it notes and questions, with her generosity, dedication, and empathy, she turned my rambling into writing, and taught me so much in the meantime.”

Commentary:

So why isn’t Linda Kuhlman listed as the author instead of Knox?

Admission #2: Knox Admits She Doesn’t Know What her Source Material is

[Author’s Note] ” .... The writing of this memoir came to a close after I had been out of prison for over a year. I had to relive everything, in soul-wrenching detail. I read court documents and the transcripts of hearings, translated them, and quoted them throughout.”

So, what is the main source of the book? AK claims that court documents and transcripts are translated and quoted throughout, yet those quotes are oddly absent from the book. What exactly is AK “re-living”? She claims not to speak Italian, yet quotes Italian conversations verbatim. Knox also claims to have been traumatized, but she “remembers” the details and conversations almost perfectly. And wasn’t a huge part of the 2009 defense that she and RS couldn’t remember anything?

The only documents that seem to be “quoted” are: (1) Matteini verdict where Knox did a snowjob on Judge Matteini by framing Lumumba; (2) 3rd Statement of November 5/6, 2007; (3) AK’s statement to Hellmann Appeal Court.

Admission #3: Knox Admits Parts of the Book are fabricated

[Author’s Note] ” .... The names of certain people, including friends, prisoners, and guards, have been changed to respect their privacy.”

Commentary:

Knox “did” create the persona of Cristiano, the man she met on the train. His real name is Federico Martini, a drug dealer whose number Knox gave to authorities. This information is publicly available. Some “tell-all” book. Makes one wonder if AK “changed” the name of her attacker to Rita Ficarra, or “changed” the name of her interrogator to Guiliano Mignini. Unfortunately, AK never specifies “which” names she changed. Also makes one wonder if AK should also have added the disclaimer that certain events had been changed as well.

Admission #4: Knox Admits she Spoke Italian (even in 2007)

[Author’s Note] ” .... Aided by my own diaries and letters, all the conversations were rendered according to my memory.”

Commentary:

How did Knox “remember” long Italian conversations is 2007? She claimed to know only basic Italian, so either that claim is false, or the conversations are largely made up. Or both.

Admission #5: Knox Implies Book is Largely Fictional

[Author’s Note] ” .... So much has been said of the case and of me, in so many languages, in so many books, articles, talk shows, news reports, documentaries, and even a TV movie. Most of the information came from people who don’t know me, or who have no knowledge of the facts.”

Commentary:

While this comment seems to imply that “other” media is based on people with no knowledge of the case, taken literally, it could mean that WTBH was also written by someone who didn’t know Knox, and had no knowledge of the case. Ms. Kuhlman? I’m looking at you.

Admission #6: Knox Never Bothered to Change Anything From the 2013 Version of WTBH

[Author’s Note] ” .... Until now I have personally never contributed to any public discussion of the case or of what happened to me.”

Commentary:

While that “may” have been true when the book was released in 2013, Knox did at least 30 interviews since then

4. Contradictions In Body Of Book Itself

Admission #7: Knox Admits There was no Contamination of Evidence

(a) While Claiming Evidence Against AK/RS is “contaminated” ....

[Chapter 23, Page 276] ” ... Starting right after we were indicted, Raffaele’s and my lawyers had requested the raw data for all Stefanoni’s forensic tests. How were the samples collected? How many cotton pads had her team used to swab the bathroom sink and the bidet? How often had they changed gloves? What tests had they done - and when? Which machines had they used, at what times, and on which days? What were the original unedited results of the DNA tests?”

[Chapter 25, Page 304] ‘’ ... When the defense questioned her, Napoleoni’s manner switched from professional —albeit dishonest—to exasperated, incredulous, and condescending. For instance, when Raffaele’s lawyer Giulia Bongiorno asked if the gloves police used at the crime scene were sterilized or one-use gloves, Napoleoni took a snarky tone, saying, “It’s the same thing.”

[Chapter 27, Page 338] ‘’ ....Gino said. Stefanoni had met none of the internationally accepted methods for identifying DNA. When the test results are too low to be read clearly, the protocol is to run a second test. This was impossible to do, because all the genetic material had been used up in the first test. Moreover, there was an extremely high likelihood of contamination in the lab, where billions of Meredith’s DNA strands were present.

[Chapter 32, Page 414] Before the first trial, the defense began requesting forensic data from the prosecution in the fall of 2008, but DNA analyst Patrizia Stefanoni dodged court orders from two different judges. She gave the defense some of, but never all, the information. Now it was Conti and Vecchiotti’s turn to try to get the raw data that Stefanoni had interpreted to draw conclusions about the genetic profiles on the knife and the bra clasp. Stefanoni continued to argue that the information was unnecessary. Not until May 11, under additional orders from Judge Hellmann, did she finally comply.

[Chapter 10, Page 105] ‘’ .... There was a bloody handprint smeared on the wall and a bloody shoeprint on the floor. A blood-soaked handkerchief was lying in the street nearby.’‘

[Chapter 21, Page 254] ‘’ ... “Amanda, the investigators are in a conundrum,” Carlo said. “They found so much of Guede’s DNA in Meredith’s room and on and inside her body. But the only forensic evidence they have of you is outside her bedroom. Raffaele’s DNA evidence is only on the bra hook. If you and Raffaele participated in the murder, as the prosecution believes, your DNA should be as easy to find as Guede’s.” “But Carlo, no evidence doesn’t mean we cleaned up. It means we weren’t there!” “I know,” Carlo said, sighing. “But they’ve already decided that you and Raffaele faked a break-in to nail Guede. I know it doesn’t make sense. They’re just adding another link to the story. It’s the only way the prosecution can involve you and Raffaele when the evidence points to a break-in and murder by Guede.”

[Chapter 23, Page 274] ‘’ ... The evidence gathered during the investigation pointed toward his guilt. His DNA was all over Meredith’s room and her body, on her intimate clothing and her purse. He had left his handprint in her blood on her pillowcase. He had fled the country. The prosecution called Guede’s story of how he “happened” to be at the villa and yet had not participated in the murder “absurd”—though they readily believed his claims against Raffaele and me. One of the big hopes for us was that with so much evidence against Guede, the prosecution would have to realize Raffaele and I hadn’t been involved….

[Chapter 27, Page 339] ” Copious amounts of Rudy Guede’s genetic material had been found in Meredith’s bedroom, on her body, in her purse, and in the toilet.”

[Afterword, Page 464] ” .... None of my DNA was found in my friend Meredith Kercher’s bedroom, where she was killed. The only DNA found, other than Meredith’s, belonged to the man convicted of her murder, Rudy Guede. And his DNA was everywhere in the bedroom. It is, of course, impossible to selectively clean DNA, which is invisible to the naked eye. We simply DNA and left Guede’s and Meredith’s behind. Nor was any other trace of me found at the murder scene, not a single fingerprint, footprint, piece of hair, or drop of blood or saliva. My innocence and Raffaele’s was irrefutable. Like my legal team, I believed that the Corte di Cassazione would affirm the innocence finding.

Commentary:

AK goes on at length about how unprofessional the Italian CSI are, and how substandard their methods are. However, AK repeatedly rants about how strong the evidence is against Guede. “Copious” amounts of evidence seems to be Knox’s favourite expression. So, are the Italian authorities complete crime-scene-destroying screw-ups, or did they do a good job? It can’t simultaneously be both. Perhaps the “A-Team” was sent in first get the evidence against Guede, while the “Inspector Gadget Team” went bumbling in afterwards.

Admission #8: Knox Admits that Conti and Vecchiotti Were “Selective” in Which DNA They Tested

[Chapter 32, Page 415] ” .... Now it was Conti and Vecchiotti’s turn to try to get the raw data that Stefanoni had interpreted to draw conclusions about the genetic profiles on the knife and the bra clasp. Stefanoni continued to argue that the information was unnecessary. Not until May 11, under additional orders from Judge Hellmann, did she finally comply.”

Commentary:

AK talks many times about how these experts were “independent, court appointed”. In the Common Law Countries, such experts are referred to as “friends of the Court”, meaning their allegience is to the Court, not to either the Prosecution or Defense. If that was the case, would they not want to test as many samples as possible to see just how far (if at all), that contamination really happened? If police methods were as shoddy as AK describes, why in the world analyze just 2 samples??? Why go through the time, effort and expense to hire these experts if you are only going to contest 2 pieces of DNA??? Heck, just look all the above section, with all those “copius” amounts of evidence that supposedly implicated Guede.

Conti and Vecchiotti later ran into legal trouble over their methods, but just from reading this book, it seems they were partial and selective about their work.

Admission #9: Knox Admits that Claims of her Being “Sex-Obsessed” Really Are True

[Chapter 2, Page 16] This was my first bona fide one-night stand.
I’d told my friends back home that I couldn’t see myself sleeping with some random guy who didn’t matter to me. Cristiano was a game changer.
We didn’t have a condom, so we didn’t actually have intercourse. But we were making out, fooling around like crazy, when, an hour later, I realized, I don’t even know this guy. I jumped up, kissed him once more, and said good-bye. I went upstairs to the tiny room Deanna and I were sharing.
She was wide awake, standing by the window. “Where have you been?” she asked. “I didn’t know where you were or if you were okay.”

[Chapter 3, Page 32] “Do you want to eat at my place?” Mirko asked. “We can watch a movie.”
“Sure,” I said, and instantly felt an inner jolt. It came from the sudden certainty that we would have sex, that that’s where our flirtation had been heading all along.
We carried our pizza boxes through Piazza Grimana, by the University for Foreigners, and down an unfamiliar street, past a park. Mirko’s house was at the end of a gravel drive. “I live here with my sister,” he told me.
During dinner at his kitchen table my thoughts battled. Was I ready to speed ahead with sex like this? I still regretted Cristiano. But I’d also been thinking about what Brett and my friends at UW had said. I could picture them rolling their eyes and saying, “Hell000, Amanda. Sex is normal.” Casual sex was, for my generation, simply what you did.

[Chapter 4, Page 39] The next morning I got up before he did, got dressed, and went to make myself breakfast. Bobby came into the kitchen a few minutes later. We were eating cookies when Laura came out of her bedroom. I’d never entertained a lover at the villa for breakfast, and it was awkward, despite Laura’s proclaimed sense of easy sexuality. All three of us tried to ignore the feeling away.
After breakfast Bobby left to return to Rome. 1 walked him to the door. He smiled, waved, and walked away.
I didn’t feel the same regret I’d had after sex with Mirko, but I still felt the same emptiness. I had no way of knowing what a big price I would end up paying for these liaisons.

[Chapter 5, Page 57] Being with Raffaele also taught me a big lesson about my personality that I’d tried so hard—and harmfully, in Cristiano’s case—to squelch. I was beginning to own up to the fact that casual hookups like I’d had with Mirko and Bobby weren’t for me.
I like being able to express myself not just as a lover but in a loving relationship. Even from the minuscule perspective of a few days with Raffaele, I understood that, for me, detaching emotion from sex left me feeling more alone than not having sex at all—bereft, really.

Commentary:

This isn’t so much an “admission”, but showing the obvious. 4 of the first 5 chapters go on and on about her casual flings, and the book is littered with references to her bunny vibrator. Later chapters make serious accusations (never reported) of sexual assault, and sexual harassment.

[Chapter 6, Page 73] ” .... itself—how sadistic her killer had been. When the police lifted up the corner of Meredith’s beige duvet they found her lying on the floor, stripped naked from the waist down. Her arms and neck were bruised. She had struggled to remain alive. Her bra had been sliced off and left next to her body. Her cotton T-shirt, yanked up to expose her breasts, was saturated with blood. The worst report was that Meredith, stabbed multiple times in the neck, had choked to death on her own blood and was found lying in a pool of it, her head turned toward the window, eyes open.”

[Chapter 8, Page 92] ” .... While we stood there, the detectives started asking me pointed questions about Giacomo and Meredith. How long had they been together? Did she like anal sex? Did she use Vaseline?”

[Chapter 10, Page 104] “.... There was evidence that Meredith had been penetrated, but none that proved there had been an actual rape.”

[Chapter 10, Page 119] ” .... I do not remember if Meredith was there or came shortly afterward. I have a hard time remembering those moments but Patrick had sex with Meredith, with whom he was infatuated, but I cannot remember clearly whether he threatened Meredith first. I remember confusedly that he killed her.”

[Chapter 11, Page 137] ‘’ ... Still, what came next shocked me. After my arrest, I was taken downstairs to a room where, in front of a male doctor, female nurse, and a few female police officers, I was told to strip naked and spread my legs. I was embarrassed because of my nudity, my period—I felt frustrated and helpless. The doctor inspected the outer lips of my vagina and then separated them with his fingers to examine the inner. He measured and photographed my intimate parts. I couldn’t understand why they were doing this. I thought, Why is this happening? What’s the purpose of this? ....’‘

[Chapter 12, Page 145] ” .... “Your panties and bra, please,” Lupa said. She was polite, even gentle, but it was still an order. I stood naked in front of strangers for the second time that day. Completely disgraced, I hunched over, shielding my breasts with one arm. I had no dignity left. My eyes filled with tears. Cinema ran her fingers around the elastic of the period-stained red underwear I’d bought with Rafael at Bubble,”

[Chapter 12, Page 152] ” .... Later, while I was sitting on the toilet, the redheaded guard came by and watched me through the peephole. So there was no privacy at all, then.”

[Chapter 16, Page 192] ” .... The first time he asked me if I was good at sex, I was sure I’d misheard him.
I looked at him incredulously and said, “What?!”
He just smiled and said, “Come on, just answer the question. You know, don’t you?”
Every conversation came around to sex. He’d say, “I hear you like to have sex. How do you like to have sex? What positions do you like most? Would you have sex with me? No? I’m too old for you?”

[Chapter 18, Page 207] ” .... They were convinced that Meredith had been raped—they’d found her lying on the floor half undressed, a pillow beneath her hips—and that the sexual violence had escalated to homicidal violence.”

[Chapter 24, Page 286] ” .... They said she kissed me once and that I feared further sexual harassment. They knew she was a cleaning fanatic and that she wouldn’t let me make coffee because it would leave water spots on the sink.”

[Chapter 27, Page 335] ” .... I couldn’t stand thinking about Meredith in the starkly clinical terms the scientists were using to describe her. Did her bruises indicate sexual violence or restraint? What did the wounds to her hands and neck suggest about the dynamics of the aggression? What did the blood splatter and smears on the floor and armoire prove about her position in relation to her attacker or attackers?”

[Chapter 30, page 377] ” .... When we first met, we’d entertained each other making light of prison’s darkest aspects—being subjected to daily strip searches by agenti”

Commentary:

AK was made (more) infamous from her “Baby Brother” story, published online in 2007

Again, not so much an admission, but showing the obvious. Just a thought, but maybe Meredith’s murder really wasn’t about anger or jealousy. Perhaps Knox is just a sexual predator, who decided to “silence” her victim afterwards.

Admission #11: Knox Admits There is a Strong Case

[Chapter 6, Page 65] Reference to the bloody footprint on the bathmat, (dismissed as “dripping”)

[Chapter 10, Page 113] Knox admits Sollecito pulled her alibi.

[Chapter 17, Page 197] References the murder weapon being found.

[Chapter 17, Page 199] Reference to a striped sweater that went missing.

[Various] See the section below. Knox makes numerous incriminating admissions. Details she knew about the murder.

Admission #12: Knox Admits She Knows What Happened to Meredith

(a) Knox knew that Guede had used the toilet at her flat. There is no other explanation. Consider that Meredith’s murder happened sometime between 10pm and midnight, and Knox came back around 11am the next morning. This means it had been unflushed for 11-13 hours.

(j) Knox knew—as did Sollecito—that nothing had been taken during the break in.

(k) Knox knew a black man was involved. She just falsely accused the wrong one.

(l) Knox’s “alibi” for her footprints—Sollecito’s—in Meredith’s blood was that it was just bleach.

Commentary:

Although the details have been “dripping” out, this in particular reads like a pretty damning murder confession.)

Admission #13: Knox Admits her “50 hour interrogation” is false

[Chapter 6, Page 77] ” .... Now I see that I was a mouse in a cat’s game. While I was trying to dredge up any small thing that could help them find Meredith’s killer and trying to get my head around the shock of her death, the police were deciding to bug Raffaele’s and my cell phones.

[Chapter 7, Page 83] ” .... The police weren’t stopping to sleep and didn’t seem to be allowing us to, either. Rafael and I were part of the last group to leave the questura, along with Laura, Filomena, Giacomo, and the other guys from downstairs, at 5:30 A.M. The police gave Rafael and me explicit instructions to be back at the questura a few hours later, at 11 A.M. “Sharp,” they said.

[Chapter 10, Page 105] ” .... But trying to be adult in an unmanageable situation, I borrowed Raffaele’s sweatpants and walked nervously to my 9 A.M. grammar class. It was the first time since Meredith’s body was found that I’d been out alone.
Class wasn’t as normal as I would have liked. Just before we began the day’s lesson, a classmate raised her hand and asked, “Can we talk about the murder that happened over the weekend?”

[Chapter 10, Page 108] ” .... Did the police know Id show up, or were they purposefully separating Rafael and me? When we got there they said I couldn’t come inside, that I’d have to wait for Rafael in the car. I begged them to change their minds. I said, “I’m afraid to be by myself in the dark.”
They gave me a chair outside the waiting room, by the elevator. I’d been doing drills in my grammar workbook for a few minutes when a silver-haired police officer—I never learned his name—came and sat next to me. He said, “As long as you’re here, do you mind if I ask you some questions?”
I was still clueless, still thinking I was helping the police, still unable or unwilling to recognize that I was a suspect.”

[Chapter 10, Page 114] ” .... “Where did you go? Who did you text?” Ficarra asked, sneering at me.
“I don’t remember texting anyone.”
They grabbed my cell phone up off the desk and scrolled quickly through its history.
“You need to stop lying. You texted Patrick. Who’s Patrick?”
“My boss at Le Chic.”
“What about his text message? What time did you receive that?”
“I don’t know. You have my phone,” I said defiantly, trying to combat hostility with hostility. I didn’t remember that I’d deleted Patrick’s message.”

[Chapter 10, Page 117] ” .... People were shouting at me. “Maybe you just don’t remember what happened. Try to think. Try to think. Who did you meet? Who did you meet? You need to help us. Tell us!”
A cop boomed, “You’re going to go to prison for thirty years if you don’t help us.”

Commentary:

A number of points to address in the “Knox Interrogation Hoax”

(a) Knox complains that her phone and RS’ were tapped, but it seems that no effort was ever made either to pull their phone records, confirm their locations, confirm if the phones were on, or to read any text messages. Seems very half assed. Knox further claims that while she and RS were the targets, police went out of their way to get them to implicate—someone else! Patrick Lumumba.

(b) Knox admits that “all” the residents of the house were detained, not just her. And hanging around the central police station is not the same as being questioned.

(c) Knox admits she went to class on Monday

(d) Knox admits she showed up at the Questura uninvited

(e) Knox admits she had to ask to be let in and to stay on

(f) Knox admits she gave PL’s name to the police

Admission #14: Knox Admits that Mysogeny was not an Issue

All of these women were involved in the case and none claimed THEY were made targets:

(a) Monica Napoleoni—Chief Inspector

(b) Rita Ficarra—Inspector

(c) Manuela Comodi—Prosecutor

(d) Claudia Matteini—Judge

(e) Patrizia Stefanoni—DNA expert

(f) Sarah Gino—Defense DNA expert

(g) Maria del Grosso—Knox lawyer

(h) Guilia Bongiorno—Sollecito lawyer

(i) Carla Vecchiotti—“Independent” expert appointed by Judge Hellmann

Commentary:

So at least 9 women were described in positions of power and influence in WTBH, and none of them claimed bias or discrimination.

Admission #15: Knox Admits Her Lawyers Didn’t “Sign Off” on her Book

[Chapter 16, Page 194] ” .... Luciano looked revolted, and Carlo urged me, “Anytime At-giro calls you alone into an office, tell him you don’t want to speak with him. He could be talking about sex because Meredith was supposedly the victim of a sexual crime and he wants to see what you’ll say. It could be a trap.”

[Chapter 20, Page 230] ‘’ ... “It’s risky,” Carlo said. “Mignini will try to pin things on you.” “He already has,” I told them. The first time I met Mignini at the questura, I hadn’t understood who he was, what was going on, what was wrong, why people were yelling at me, why I couldn’t remember anything. I thought he was someone who could help me (the mayor), not the person who would sign my arrest warrant and put me behind bars…’‘

[Chapter 21, Page 254] ‘’ ... “Amanda, the investigators are in a conundrum,” Carlo said. “They found so much of Guede’s DNA in Meredith’s room and on and inside her body. But the only forensic evidence they have of you is outside her bedroom. Raffaele’s DNA evidence is only on the bra hook. If you and Raffaele participated in the murder, as the prosecution believes, your DNA should be as easy to find as Guede’s.” “But Carlo, no evidence doesn’t mean we cleaned up. It means we weren’t there!” “I know,” Carlo said, sighing. “But they’ve already decided that you and Raffaele faked a break-in to nail Guede. I know it doesn’t make sense. They’re just adding another link to the story. It’s the only way the prosecution can involve you and Raffaele when the evidence points to a break-in and murder by Guede.”

[Chapter 22, Page 270] ‘’ ... Carlo, the pessimist, said, “Don’t get your hopes up, Amanda. I’m not sure we’ll win. There’s been too much attention on your case, too much pressure on the Italian legal system to think that you won’t be sent to trial.”

[Chapter 27, page 330] ” .... Carlo, who’d never sugarcoated my situation, said, “These are small-town detectives. They chase after local drug dealers and foreigners without visas. They don’t know how to conduct a murder investigation correctly. Plus, they’re bullies. To admit fault is to admit that they’re not good at their jobs. They suspected you because you behaved differently than the others. They stuck with it because they couldn’t afford to be wrong.”

Commentary:

While Carlo Dalla Vedova and Luciano Ghirga don’t seem overly bright (or ethical), it is very doubtful that either would commit career suicide by endorsing such claims, in essence that they failed to act to protect their client. These claims from the book were never reported.

Admission #16: Knox Admits that Guede got no “Deal” to Testify

[Chapter 22, Page 273] ” .... The first day of the pretrial was mostly procedural. Almost immediately Guede’s lawyers requested an abbreviated trial. I had no idea the Italian justice system offered this option. Carlo later told me that it saves the government money. With an abbreviated trial, the judge’s decision is based solely on evidence; no witnesses are called. The defendant benefits from this fast-track process because, if found guilty, he has his sentence cut by a third.”

[Chapter 30, Page 384] ” .... friend. That feeling was compounded when, about three weeks after Raffaele and I were convicted, the appeals court cut Rudy Guede’s sentence nearly in half, from thirty years to sixteen. Meredith’s murderer was now serving less time than I was—by ten years! How can they do this?!”

5. Will the documentary makers please actually read AK’s book?

6. Knox Illegally In Toronto

Netflix’s “Amanda Knox” was first shown at the September 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. Knox herself attended to promote the movie.

That got it off to a fast start but under the law, with her criminal record, she should not even have been there. Knowing her criminal record, it is unclear “why” she was allowed into Canada. Section 140 of the Canadian Criminal Code (public mischief), makes it a crime, punishable by up to 5 years in prison to falsely accuse someone of a crime, or to divert suspicion from him/herself.

This is the Canadian equivalent of “calunnia”, which Judge Massei gave her 1 year for, which Judge Hellmann raised to 3 years. Even though Canada has a different name for calunnia, the act itself is still very much illegal.

Since the financial restitution to PL was never paid for the hell she put him through, AK still has outstanding legal obligations, another reason she is inadmissible.

Knox claims she was not paid or compensated in any way for this documentary, though that is very unlikely. Further, the Province of Ontario has rules which prohibit criminals from cashing in on the notoriety of their crimes, still another reason Knox should not have been allowed into Canada. This is similar to American “Son-of-Sam” laws.

Even though the rape and murder charges were ultimately thrown out, Canada Border Services and Canadian Immigration are required to not allow entry to persons who pose a danger to the public. “Present at the murder scene, washing blood off her hands” isn’t exactly being “innocent” of the crime. This is the strongest reason Knox should have been denied entry.

In future, countries she visits should be put in the know on all of this.

Below: Stephen Robert Morse, Rod Blackhurst, and Brian McGinn: NO CLUE what is in book?

1. Many false claims in the film

NONE of the false claims by speakers were rebutted. Not one, by the Knox PR team moonlighting as serious directors and producers.

The producers’ bizarre technique was to place Knox, Sollecito, Conti & Vecchiotti in front of a camera and then to let them lie unchecked as they did repeatedly throughout the 90 minute film.

For example, Knox makes a very shrill claim in the film that she was repeatedly hit and forced into a “confession” by angry and abusive cops.

In fact she wasnt hit by anyone, except by herself. There was not even an interrogation that night - only the building of a list of names with a couple of kind cops.

Her own lawyers confirmed she was not hit, and they never filed a complaint. They publicly pleaded that she stop making things up. The movie never tells us this, never ever challenges Knox. We’ll return to this false claim in depth.

For balance, how many Italian justice officials do you suppose the PR team invited to represent the huge team of police, prosecutors and judges, and all of the witnesses, and the huge body of evidence? And to rebut Knox’ claims? After, all she was accusing his staff of crimes.

Precisely one. Dr Mignini. That was it.

He was not even told of the accusations of crimes from Knox. Instead he was asked to address only childish touchy-feely questions which no Italian journalist would ever dream of addressing to a highly trained prosecutor or judge. Dr Mignini is a regular on Italian TV explaining serious legal issues of some complexity, and is a master at it.

2. Lies previously reported and rebutted

We have so far rebutted seven false claims made by the team in the media or in the film in the previous posts here..

(1) That Knox was found innocent by the Fifth Chambers and fully exonerated or exculpated. No she wasnt. She was confirmed as being at the scene at the time with blood on her hands based on copious evidence, and any trial or appeal court which normally handles murders (the Fifth Chambers does not) would have insisted the Nencini verdict should stand. She remains guilty for life of calunnia and she still owes Patrick his award. Research anyone?

(2) That Dr Mignini hoodwinked the Justice system some way in a supposed pursuit of Amanda Knox although 30-plus judges in fact guided the judicial process - in Italian justice they and not prosecutors are the equivalent of American district attorneys. Raffaele Sollecito is conveniently not accounted for in this conspiracy theory, although with the possible exception of Patrick Lumumba’s lawyer, Sollecito’s words for Knox were the harshest, and his anger rattled on for years. Research anyone?

(3) That Dr Mignini pursued this because he had been convicted, although the conviction, by a rogue prosecutor and rogue judge in Florence with murky connections, had been annulled (in effect deleted; no record) by an appeal court and that confirmed by a strident Supreme Court ruling more than three years prior to the Netflix movie. Research anyone?

(4) That Dr Mignini had consulted a psychic, though it was widely known for many years that he had done no such thing and had written to Corriere at length refuting this more than three years prior to the Netflix movie. Research anyone?

(5) That Dr Mignini holds satanic and sex-orgy theories in this and other cases. No he does not. He has been on national TV pushing satanic theories back and saying they are few. The satanic theory of the Monster of Florence case goes back over a decade before he was requested to check an arm of the case. Knox and Sollecito and Guede were all convicted of murder with a sex-crime element, read all the judges reports prior to trial, all agreed an attack with a sexual aspect was what the evidence said. Research anyone?

(6) That the Italian justice system is somehow a dangerous error-prone joke (widely accepted as gospel by the movie’s reviewers) though in fact it is one of the most careful systems in the world and unlike the American system (with which it links extensively) never ever sees a false conviction standing by the end of the exhaustive appeals process. Research anyone?

(7) That the release of a provisional positive HIV finding for Knox and a list she created of her recent sex partners was a malicious act by prison staff or prosecutors, though they released precisely NOTHING and it was the Knox defense team that was fervently distributing those materials (of considerable damage to Knox’s public perception). Research anyone?

3. Starting to address Knox’s lies

Much of what Knox says in the movie is untrue. That is not unusual. She consistently lies in all her interviews. She also consistently tries to damage people.

In her book alone we have counted several lies on each page, close to 1000, and about 100 instances of defamations, lies intended to create real damage.

We are going to post separately on each of Knox’s most sweeping and most self-serving lies. Here, we give several dozen examples of lies repeatedly refuted, some of which are in the movie.

The Knox PR team moonlighting as serious directors and producers claim that they devoted SIX YEARS to getting their movie right. They could have found these rebuttals and read them all in a day or two if an honest movie was what they wanted to make.

Perhaps they were simply uncaring of the truth, lost in the complexities of the case, and uncaring of who they damaged, including the real victim’s family, and of what portrait they offered of Italy and Italian justice and its officers, however damaging and vile and untrue.

Or perhaps they were already deeply corrupted, and crazed at the prospect of fame and future career prospects and bloodmoney. If so, they are in unsavory company.

4. Knox’s lies to Italy (#1) rebutted

Knox does not often get the opportunity to lie on a grand scale to Italians. Just as well for her as the negative reaction is opposite and immediate.

“Daffy Knox” and “Terminator Knox” who forever sought media attention at trial in 2009 were retired from 2010 onward in favor of “Whiny Victim Knox”.

In 2013 Knox was too timid to return for her own Florence appeal presided over by Judge Nencini, but not too timid to send him a massively self-infatuated email containing some of the same lies Knox repeats in the movie. Here they all are, easily rebutted by Finn MacCool in Dec 2013. Research anyone?

It is dated 15 December 2013 and was handed to Dr Nencini by Dr Ghirga, apparently to the disdain of both of them. It contains many statements which, if she were under oath, could be considered perjury.

One telling point is that she claims “I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid.” Her co-defendant, Raffaele Sollecito, was not so afraid and he did present himself at an earlier stage of the proceedings.

He made a spontaneous statement and the judge assured him that he should feel free to intervene and make further interventions whenever he wished. So far he hasn’t wished to - he preferred to head back to the Caribbean for his holiday.

But that event and that presence by Sollecito completely undermine the credibility of Knox’s claim that she feels afraid of the court proceedings. There would be nothing to stop her coming and going, at this stage, just as Sollecito did.

I have no doubt that my lawyers have explained and demonstrated the important facts of this case that prove my innocence and discredit the unjustified accusations of the prosecution and civil parties.

That’s what her lawyers were about to try to do. But instead they had to hand this email to the judge, showing their client’s complete contempt for the court process.

I seek not to supplant their work

She doesn’t want to supplant the work of her own lawyers? Most defendants don’t, nor do they feel the need to tell the court that using an archaic seventeenth-century grammatical construction (where modern English would have “I do not mean to…” or “I do not wish to…”)

Because I am not present to take part in [my own appeal], I feel compelled to share.

As Judge Nencini said, if anyone wants to talk to a court, come to court. Knox chose not to be present, which means that the word “because” is not a logical connector for why she feels compelled to share what she thinks. “Even though” would make more sense.

The Court has access to my previous declarations and I trust will review them…

The court has access to thousands of pages. Everybody trusts that courts will review the evidence before passing judgment – that’s how the legal process works.

I must repeat: I am innocent.

In fact she does not have to repeat that, which is simply a reiteration of her not guilty plea.

I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid.

The wording is reminiscent of a previous declaration, “I am very afraid of Patrik, the African boy who…” Also the court may remember the presence of her co-defendant, who made a brief presentation to the court (and was invited to intervene again at any time he saw fit) and who afterwards flew back to his extended vacation in the Dominican Republic. It is difficult to see what the defendants have to be afraid of from the court, except perhaps the truth.

I am afraid that the prosecution’s vehemence will leave an impression on you, that their smoke and mirrors will blind you.

The prosecution’s case has already been made; this was the opportunity for the defense to make their case. It is the court’s duty to consider the evidence without being overly swayed by the vehemence of lawyers from either side – they look at the facts, and pass judgment based on that, and this happens in literally millions of cases every year. (Cassazione alone reviews more than 80 thousand cases each year.)

This is not for lack of faith in your powers of discernment, but because the prosecution has succeeded before in convincing a perfectly sound court of concerned and discerning adults to convict innocent people – Raffaele and me.

The second half of the sentence contradicts the first. The writer is explicitly stating that she doubts that the court has sufficient powers of discernment to be able to see through the prosecution’s arguments. Her justification for saying this is simply that it has happened before, with a previous court.

I’ve attentively followed this process and gleaned the following facts…

This is a delusional statement. The writer is the defendant, who is the subject of the process, not an external observer to it. We can compare it with her statements following her arrest, in which she claimed still to be helping the police on an equal basis with them, despite being charged with the murder.

No physical evidence places me in Meredith’s bedroom, the scene of the crime…

The bedroom is where the murder took place, but the crime scene is much wider than that, and certainly encompasses the adjoining room where the burglary was faked, the bathroom where the killers cleaned up, and the corridor that connects those rooms. Knox’s blood, DNA, bare footprints are all found in those places. Within Meredith’s room itself, there is also a woman’s shoeprint that does not match the victim, and which Knox’s own lawyer was obliged to claim was caused by an unfortunate fold in the pillowcase.

Meredith’s murderer left ample evidence in the brutal scenario: handprints, footprints, shoe prints in Meredith’s blood, DNA in her purse, on her clothing, in her body.

The term “brutal scenario” makes no sense here, although she repeats it again a couple of lines later. Perhaps she means “crime scene” or “bedroom”. The only footprints found at the crime scene are those of Knox and Sollecito. A woman’s shoeprint in the room where the murder took place cannot be that of either Guede or the victim, and is most likely that of Knox.

The prosecution has failed to explain how I could have… been the one to fatally wound Meredith – without leaving any genetic trace of myself. That is because it is impossible.

Actually it is perfectly possible to do this – for example, simply by stabbing someone to death while wearing gloves. However, in this case the prosecution has in fact explained how several traces of Knox’s DNA have been found on the handle of the knife which had the victim’s DNA on the blade. That obviously fits a scenario in which Knox stabbed Meredith Kercher with that knife.

Either I was there, or I wasn’t.

The same thing applies to the appeal court. Either the defendants are there, or they are not. In this case, the defendant is not.

The analysis of the crime scene answers this question: I wasn’t there.

Knox’s footprints, blood and DNA, sometimes mixed with that of the victim, all place her at the crime scene, and so does her DNA on the handle of the murder weapon.

My interrogation was illegal and produced a false “confession” that demonstrated my non-knowledge of the crime.

“Non-knowledge” is a curious word. Knox’s witness interview was perfectly legal – it was only the unexpected confession from the witness that changed the status of that interview, so that its contents could no longer be used against her. But there is no question over its legality.

The subsequent memoriali, for which I was wrongfully found guilty of slander…

This is an extraordinary aside. The defendant is here rejecting the legitimacy of the Italian Supreme Court, which has definitively found against her, and is also rejecting the findings of the Hellmann court that provisionally freed her, pending appeal. Every single court has found against her on this count.

. ...did not further accuse but rather recanted that false “confession”.

Let us reread some excerpts from this supposed recantation: “After dinner I noticed there was blood on Raffaele’s hand… I stand by my statements that I made last night about events that could have taken place in my home with Patrik… In these flashbacks I’m having, I see Patrik as the murderer…Why did I think of Patrik?... Is there any other evidence condemning Patrik or any other person?” This is not a recantation, and it does in fact contain further accusations of Patrick Lumumba while also seeking to throw suspicion both on Sollecito and an unnamed “other person”.

My behavior after the discovery of the murder indicates my innocence.

As dozens of witnesses have testified in a series of trials and appeals, Knox’s post-murder behavior indicated the exact opposite, which is why suspicion fell on her in the first place.

I did not flee Italy when I had the chance.

On page 71 of her memoir, Knox recounts the following exchange with Officer Ficarra, on the day after the murder was discovered: “My parents want me to go to Germany to stay with relatives for a couple of weeks. Is that okay?” She said, “You can’t leave Perugia. You’re an important part of the investigation.”

I stayed in Perugia and was at the police’s beck and call for over 50 hours in four days.

Chapter Ten of her memoir gives her own account of what she did on Monday, November 5th. She went to a nine o’clock grammar class, at which she refused to discuss the case with her fellow students; she spoke on the phone with her Aunt Dolly, admitting that she had not yet contacted the US embassy; she bumped into Patrick Lumumba where she refused to talk to BBC reporters; she spent the afternoon with Sollecito and then accompanied him to a friend’s house where she played the ukulele. Far from being at the police’s beck and call, she ignored their request that she stay home while they interview Sollecito separately, and turned up to the Questura regardless, although not before they had finished their evening meal.

The police coerced me into signing a false “confession”….

Her false accusation of Patrick Lumumba, for which she was convicted and has already served four years in prison, was not a confession and was not coerced.

. …one may be coerced into giving a false “confession” because of psychological torture… This is a universal problem.

The US-based Innocence Project reports that there have been 244 exonerations since 2000, which is just over seventeen per year, which in turn means that currently in the USA, roughly 0.1% of cases are eventually overturned. Being wrongfully convicted might be devastating for the person concerned, but it is not a universal problem.

I did not carry around Raffaele’s kitchen knife.

The defendant has not been accused of carrying the knife around, but rather of stabbing Meredith Kercher to death with it. Forensic evidence supports that accusation, too.

I had no contact with Rudy Guede. Like many youth in Perugia, I had once crossed paths with Rudy Guede.

Very typical of Knox’s writing is this kind of self-contradiction, sometimes occurring within the same sentence, or as in this case, in consecutive sentences, seemingly with no self-awareness that any contradiction has even occurred.

If the prosecution truly had a case against me, there would be no need for these theatrics.

The prosecution is present in the court, having made its presentation in the usual way. The defense lawyers are about to do exactly the same thing. The only theatrics happening in the court at that moment is a bizarre email sent by one of the defendants, in lieu of attending her own appeal to her own murder conviction.

But because no evidence exists that proves my guilt, the prosecution would seek to deceive you with these impassioned, but completely inaccurate and unjustified pronouncements.

No further comments… [End Finn MacCool]

5. Knox’s lies to Italy (#2) rebutted

The Italian weekly magazine Oggi is actually on trial for contempt of court for translating and republishing some of the numerous lies and defamations in Knox’s book Waiting To Be Heard. This is the article with offending Knox quotes in bold, and below our own rebuttal. Research anyone?

Amanda Knox: The American girl’s sensational story

Chilling. No other adjectives come to mind after having read Waiting to be Heard, finally released in the United States. An extremely detailed and very serious charge against the police and magistrates who conducted the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher.

Immediately after the crime, Amanda recounts, and for entire days and nights, they had interrogated the American girl and placed her under pressure to make her confess to a non-existent truth, without officially investigating her, denying her the assistance of a lawyer, telling her lies, even prohibiting her from going to the bathroom and giving her smacks so as to make her sign a confession clearly extorted with something similar to torture.

And now the situation is very simple. There are only two choices: either Amanda is writing lies, and as a consequence the police officers and magistrates are going to have to sue her for defamation; or else she is telling the truth, and so they are going to have to go, not without being sanctioned by the CSM [the magistrates’ governing body] and the top brass of the Police. The third possibility, which is to pretend that nothing has happened, would be shameful for the credibility of our judicial system.

Amanda Knox has written her Waiting to be Heard memoir with the sense of revulsion and of relief of someone who has escaped by a hair’s breadth from a legal disaster, but has got her sums wrong. Cassation has decided that the [appeal] proceedings have to be redone and the hearings should be (re)commencing in October before the Florence Court of Appeal.

In a USA Today interview, Ms Knox has not excluded the possibility of “returning to Italy to face this battle too”, but it would be a suicidal decision: it’s likely that the appeal will result in a conviction, and the Seattle girl will end up in the black hole from which she has already spent 1,427 days.

In this way Waiting to be Heard risks being the “film” on which Amanda’s last words are recorded about the Mystery of Perugia, her definitive version.

We have read a review copy. And we were dumbfounded. Waiting to be Heard is a diary that has the frenetic pace of a thriller, written in a dry prose (behind the scenes is the hand of Linda Kulman, a journalist at the Huffington Post), even “promoted” by Michiko Kakutani, long-time literary critic at the New York Times.

The most interesting part does not concern the Raffaele Sollecito love story (which Amanda reduces it to puppy love: “With the feeling, in hindsight, I knew that he… that we were still immature, more in love with love than with each other”), and whoever goes looking for salacious details about the three Italian boys Amanda had casual sex with, one night stands, will be frustrated (Ms Knox describes those enounters with the nonchalance of an entomologist disappointed with his experiments: “We undressed, we had sex, I got dressed again with a sense of emptiness”).

There are no scoops about the night of the murder and even the many vicissitudes endured during the 34,248 hours spent in Capanne prison – the [claimed] sexual molestations suffered under two guards, the unexpected kiss planted by a bisexual cellmate, the threats made by another two prisoners – remain on the backdrop, like colourful notations.

Because what is striking and upsetting, in the book, is the minute descriptions, based on her own diaries, on the case documents and on a prodigious memory, of how Ms Knox had been incriminated (or “nailed”).

COME IN KAFKA. A Kafkian account in which the extraordinary naivety of Amanda (the word naïve, ingénue, is the one which recurs most often in the 457 pages of the book) mixes with the strepitous wickedness of the investigators decided on “following a cold and irrational trail because they had nothing better in hand”.

Devour the first 14 chapters and ask yourself: is it possible that the Police and Italian justice work with such incompetence, ferocity, and disdain for the truth? You place yourself in her situation and you scare yourself: If it happened to me? You’re in two minds: is it a likely accusation, or a squalid calumny, the version of Amanda?

Because in reading it you discover that in the four days following the discovery of Meredith Kercher’s body (on 2 November 2007), Amanda was interrogated continuously, and without the least of procedural guarantees [=due process].

She changes status from witness to suspect without being aware of it.” No one had told me my rights, no one had told me that I could remain silent”, she writes. When she asked if she had the right to a lawyer, the Public Prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini, had responded like this: “No, no, that will only worsen things: it would mean that you don’t want to help us”. Thus, the Public Prosecutor, Giuliano Mignini.

For a long period of time, Ms Knox, who at the time spoke and understood hardly any Italian at all, mistook him for the Mayor of Perugia, come to the police station to help her.

Then, with the passage of time and of the pages, the assessment changes: Mignini is a prosecutor “with a bizarre past”, investigated for abuse of office (he was convicted at first instance, but Cassation annulled the verdict on the grounds of lack of jurisdiction: the case will be held in Torino – ndr) and with the hunger to fabricate “strange stories to solve his cases”.

Mignini “is a madman who considers his career more important than my liberty or the truth about the killing of Meredith”. On the phone, the Perugian prosecutor reacts with aplomb: “First I will read the book and then I will consider it. Certainly, if it really calls me ‘mad’ or worse, I think I will file suit”.

BEING IN PRISON IS LIKE CAMPING Amanda goes looking. When the officers mysteriously bring her along to the crime scene inspection of the apartment below the one in which she and Meredith were living in, Ms Knox put on the shoe protectors and the white forensics gloves and called out Ta-dah! spreading her arms “as if I was at the start of a musical: I wanted to appear helpful”.

When they dragged her in handcuffs into Capanne Prison, she believed what the Police would have told her, and that was they would hide her for a couple of days to protect her (from the true killer, one presumes) and for unspecified bureaucratic reasons. “In my head I was camping: ‘This won’t last more than a week in the mountains’, I told myself,” writes Amanda.

They take her money off her, and her credit cards, licence and passport, and she draws strength from repeating to herself that “surely they’re not going to give me a uniform, seeing that I’m a special case and that I’ll be here for only a little while”.

But it’s the account of the notorious interrogation that takes the breath away. Around ten in the evening on her last day of freedom, Ms Knox accompanies Raffaele to the police station (he was called in, also without a lawyer, by the Police) and is thrown into a nightmare which she populates with many faces: there is Officer Rita Ficcara, who gives her two cuffs on the head (“To help you remember,” she would say); there’s another officer who advises her: “If you don’t help us, you’ll end up in prison for 30 years”; Mignini arrives and advises her not to call a lawyer; super-policewoman Monica Napoleoni dives in and bluffs: “Sollecito has dropped your alibi: he says that on the night of the murder you had left his apartment and that you had told him to lie to ‘cover you’”.

And a crescendo of yelling and intimidations that lasts from 11 at night until 5.45 in the morning. Seven hours “produce” two confessions that, exactly because they are made without a defence lawyer, cannot be used in the proceedings, but forever after “stain” the image of the accused Knox: Amanda places herself at the scene of the crime and accuses Patrick Lumumba.

RAFFAELE CONFIRMS THE ACCUSATIONS An account of the horror is confirmed by Sollecito in his memoir, Honor Bound, Raffaele writes of having heard “the police yelling at Amanda and then the cries and sobs of my girl, who was yelling ‘Help!’ in Italian in the other room”, and of having being threatened in his turn (“If you try to get up and go, I’ll punch you till you’ll bleed and I’ll kill you. I’ll leave you in a pool of blood”, another officer had whispered to him).

Published lines which have passed right under the radar of the Perugian investigators: “No legal action [against the interrogators] has been notified to us,” Franco Sollecito, Raffaele’s dad, tell us. For having recounted the sourness of her interrogation in court, Amanda was investigated for calunnia: the trial will take place in Florence. This one, too, will be a circumstantial case: it’s the word of two young people against that of the public prosecutor and the police.

The recording of the interrogation would have unveiled which side the truth stands on. But it has gone missing.

Our own rebuttals:

Knox was NOT interrogated for days and nights. She was put under no pressure in her brief witness interviews except possibly by Sollecito who had just called their latest alibi “a pack of lies”.

Knox WAS officially investigated in depth, after she surprisingly “confessed” and placed herself and Patrick at the scene. Prior to that she’d been interviewed less than various others, who each had one consistent alibi.

Knox herself pushed to make all three statements without a lawyer on the night of 5-6 November 2007 in which she claimed she went out from Sollecito’s house, met Patrick, and witnessed him killing Meredith.

Far from Knox being denied a lawyer, discussions were stopped before the first statement and not resumed, in the later hearing she was formally warned she needed one; she signed a confirmation of this in front of witnesses.

Prosecutor Mignini who Knox accuses of telling her a lawyer would hurt her prospects when she claims she asked for one was not even in the police station at that interview; he was at home.

She was not prohibited from going to the bathroom. At trial, she testified she was treated well and was frequently offered refreshments. Her lawyers confirmed this was so.

She was not given smacks by anyone, though she did repeatedly smack her own head. Over a dozen witnesses testified that she was treated well, broke into a conniption spontaneously, and thereafter her talking was hard to stop.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Knox was subject to “something similar to torture” and as mentioned above only Sollecito applied any pressure, not any of the police.

There is nothing “suicidal” about returning to Italy to defend herself at the new appeal. Sollecito did. She risks an international arrest warrant and extradition if she doesn’t.

There is no proof except for her own claims of sexual molestations in prison; she is a known serial liar; and she stands out for an extreme willingness to talk and write about sex.

Many people have testified she was treated well in prison: her own lawyers, a member of parliament, and visitors from the US Embassy were among them; she herself wrote that it was okay.

She may have based her account on her diaries and “prodigious memory” but the obviously false accusation against the prosecutor suggests that much of the book was made up.

The investigators had a great deal of evidence against Knox in hand, not nothing, and they were not ever faulted for any action; they helped to put on a formidable case at trial in 2009.

“Police and Italian justice work with such incompetence, ferocity, and disdain for the truth” is contradicted by a very complete record prior to trial which was praised by the Supreme Court.

Mr Mignini has NO bizarre past at all. He is widely known to be careful and fair. He would not have been just promoted to first Deputy Prosecutor General of Umbria otherwise.

He was put on trial by a rogue prosecutor desperate to protect his own back from Mignini’s investigations; the Supreme Court has killed the trumped up case dead.

There was nothing “mysterious” about Knox being taken to the crime scene to see if any knives were gone, but her wailing panic when she saw the knives was really “mysterious”.

Knox never thought she was in prison for her own protection; she had signed an agreement at the 5:00 am interview confirming she did know why she was being held.

Monica Napoleoni did not “bluff” that Sollecito had just trashed their joint alibi; he actually did so, because his phone records incriminated him; he agreed to that in writing.

There was no crescendo of “yelling and intimidations that lasts from 11 at night until 5.45”. There were two relatively brief sessions. Knox did most of the talking, named seven possible perps, and drew maps.

There was zero legal requirement to record the recap/summary interview, no recording has “gone missing” and many officers present testified to a single “truth” about what happened.

6. Coming up In Our Next Posts

More of the same. Knox blowing smoke and our exposing her. Some of the same smoke she blew for Netflix. And also, our lies of omission seies.

See “Amanda Knox” producer Stephen Morse’s shocking comment about the Kercher family

Posted on September 26, 2016 by pataz1

Here’s what we know: Sometime in late 2010 or early 2011, “Amanda Knox” directors Rod Blackhurst and Brian McGinn hooked up with Stephen Robert Morse and decided to create a documentary on Knox. Morse and Blackhurst went to Perugia in September of 2011 when Knox’s first appeal was heard. It appears that McGinn may have been with them, and that they connected with journalist Mario Spezi (who had previously been arrested by prosecutor Mignini for interfering with an investigation).

The Kercher family was represented at trial by their lawyer, Francesco Maresca. In Italy, the civil suit happens at the same time as the criminal suit, so Maresca was there to represent the Kerchers in their civil suit against the defendants for Meredith’s death. As a part of the original conviction in 2009, the Kerchers were awarded damages.

Knox’s defenders frequently attacked the Kercher family and their lawyer, Maresca, for the damages awarded to the Kercher family. Knox’s defenders claimed Maresca and the Kercher family were driven by the monetary damages awarded to the Kerchers.

Producer Stephen Morse, while covering the appeals, joined in these attacks on Meredith’s family, claiming the Kerchers were blinded by money. While covering the appeals, Morse stated his belief the DNA evidence would result in an acquittal. Three days later, while waiting for the verdict, Morse claimed the Kerchers were ignoring evidence. In a tweet (still available Sept 2016), Morse charged the Kercher family with being driven by money:

“i feel for the kercher family but they cannot ignore dna evidence simply because they were awared an 8 figure civil victory. #amandaknox” –Stephen Robert Morse, 3-Oct 2011, 7:57 am.

For US readers, this is similar to claiming the Nicole Brown family was only out for money when they filed their civil suit against O.J. Simpson.

Two of the Kerchers- Meredith’s father John and her brother Lyle- have previously spoken about the symbolic nature of the damages, and that they do not care about the money awarded. In 2009 Lyle told the Guardian “It’s not the case that this has ever been about us seeking money, which is why we’ve been reluctant to do much media stuff throughout. That money will never really change anything in that respect.”

Meredith’s father John Kercher spoke to the Sun after the Hellmann appellate court overturned the trial conviction. He spoke out against potential book and movie deals for Knox and Sollecito:

Kercher explained that their civil claim- and an £8million damages award made when Knox was convicted – were symbolic in Italian law. “I find it distasteful that Knox stands to make millions from what happened to Meredith. I don’t think anyone should make money out of it – not us, not them,” he said.

“How would any parent feel if their daughter’s murder was to be turned into a movie for people’s entertainment?”

“We would not take a single cent from Amanda Knox,” Kercher added.

Nobody has asked yet how much Netflix is paying Rod Blackhurst, Brian McGinn, and producer Stephen Robert Morse for the rights to add the “Amanda Knox” film to Netflix’s library on September 30th, 2016.

Sunday, July 03, 2016

How Amanda Knox Is Encouraging West Seattle To Adulate Seriously Sick Individuals

Fellow poster Pensky encouraged us to consider some bizarrely narcissistic postings by Knox on her Facebook.

That led me to her June 13, 2016 discussion of the Stanford rape case. My eyeballs nearly popped out at seeing Knox wax eloquent about Brock Allen Turner (right, at bottom, with lawyers).

He assaulted a comatose young woman outside a frat party, ran away but was seized by passersby. Then 12 jurors unanimously convicted Turner guilty of 3 felonies, but all he has admitted to doing is ingesting alcohol.

He is defiant, unrepentant, and really got lucky with Judge Persky giving him a slap on the wrist, 6 months in county jail, not even prison and he may serve only 3.

IMO, Brock Allen Turner is Knox’s new object of envy and Judge Persky is her new hero.

She waxes prolific about this light-sentenced rape case in the West Seattle Herald yet never ONCE reproaches or rebukes Brock Turner in a sincere and unambivalent way. She minces words, dances around in the passive voice, pretends to silently agree with the public’s outrage, yet she doesn’t fool anybody.

She is seething with jealousy that Turner got such a light sentence!

She is probably comparing Turner’s lucky escape with how she might have dodged a bullet had she only let Meredith live and not “finished her off” (my quotes, my assumptions).

Instead of dispatching the violated Meredith, Knox hoping to avoid prosecution by silencing her victim, now regrets it even more when she sees that Brock Allen Turner left his rape victim alive and that despite his alcohol fueled assault, he got off very lightly. Oh, how green with envy is Foxy Knoxy in retrospect.

Her entire article trumpets the concept of “punishment does no good”.

Yes, just let the devils go because nobody can make them feel ashamed of their crimes if the perp doesn’t wanna feel ashamed. Knox knows that from experience. She sees it in Brock, with his mealy-mouthed letter he wrote as a smokescreen fake apology.

Knox remains defiant and without remorse like Brock Turner. In this article she has the audacity to talk about how sexual assault can rarely be determined; that it’s mostly a he said/she said dilemma as to consent, and thus the suspect must be considered innocent due to reasonable doubt in most cases.

She even quotes Blackstone: “better for 10 guilty folks to escape than one innocent suffer”. I certainly agree with that. Knox got the benefit of that adage. So did Sollecito. Because they scrubbed and cleaned so well.

Knox wonders in this article if Turner’s torments in having to register as a sex offender, lose his college scholarship, lose great job opportunities, live with his reputation in tatters—if these realities will prevent him from reoffending.

She concludes, “Perhaps not. Judge Perky’s [sic] humanization of Turner-the-criminal is not abominable.” Of course not, Knox loves this judge. Herself the felon would desire the judge to go easy on all such birds of a feather as herself.

Nope, Knox isn’t into punishment. Not severe ones at any rate. No, punishment does no good in her opinion.

Her solution? to support the victim, to educate women on how not to become a victim, give victims solidarity and support, “pay attention and care about the suffering of the victim, whether they are vindicated in a court of law or not.”

Duh…this is precisely what TJMK and Perugia Murder File.net and .org have been doing for nearly a decade!!!

Knox’s desire as in the title of her article about redirecting focus, redirect it to what? To Knox’s new wisdom that sentences of any sort do no good, they’re vengeance and we should support the victim rather than shame the criminal! Otherwise, the criminal if treated too harshly has the right to his own victim status.

I do agree that extremely harsh sentences do as much damage to the soul of a prisoner as the lightweight joke sentence Brock Turner received.

Knox must be so jealous of the bumbling Mr. Turner. Oh if only she had let her victim live and accepted a few months behind bars, is probably her regret.

Like Turner, Knox confesses to nothing but being confused and forgetful on the night of the crime due to a fog of cannabis. She pretends to have been reduced to a dream state, thus removing any culpability in her conscience. How convenient.

Turner’s best ally and defense was his inebriation. So was Knox’s. Thank goodness for substance abuse which removes felt guilt, though the victim lies dead on the floor.

I cannot believe the gall of Knox to highlight the Brock Turner rape case and parade as a pundit for improved sentencing (or cessation of all sentences, in her ideal world, right?)

She is a ridiculous twisted pundit who claims to seek to improve the criminal justice system. Unmitigated gall. Most jailbirds like her do have great ideas for what society “should have done” with them other than imprison them for their crimes.

She talks about good things but they all assume the victim is still alive to help, things like “embrace a victim through their recovery, offer them resources, give them voice, recognize their value.” But did she recognize Meredith’s value? She could barely speak her name at trial or write it in her book. How many trees has she planted for Meredith?

Her last paragraph says not to equate condemning a criminal with recognizing a victim, and do not deny the “reparation a victim deserves.” What reparations has she paid Patrick Lumumba?

I will assess her silly Dawndra Budd photo spread soon. It is just more blind preening and another form of lies. Dawndra Budd has been deceived along with many others but The Herald article takes first prize in the brass mule contest. Knox loves Mr. Turner the escape artist.

And I am by no means entirely sympathetic to the drunk Emily Doe who was raped by Turner due to her own bad morals and stupidity.

However the really egregious culprit is the even dumber and cowardly Turner. His father is his best apologist, until Knox. At least Brock Turner did his crime alone and without a knife in hand and without a wolfpack of strong accomplices for moral support like Knox needed, if one compares the “courage” of Knox and Turner. They both used Dutch courage from a bottle as the saying goes.

Turner the lout deserves at least a two or three year sentence in lockup and extra community service hours, and stiff fines paid to his victim. Knox has skipped out on three-fourths of her rightful sentence and she remains as defiant and unremorseful as Turner, and she offended much much worse than he did. She seems to hint she might reoffend.

She never really denounces Turner, nor clearly supports Emily Doe except to admire Doe’s courage to “articulate her experience of absolute vulnerability with clarity and dignity”.

Articulate, schmiculate. Emily Doe cries loud and long about her offended dignity when there was little dignity to start with as her drunken public stupor showed. She did not deserve a physical attack, however.

Knox sympathizes with her because Doe was angry at the litany of questions put to her by the police and the wringer the police put her through about her lifestyle in an effort to delegitimize her. Knox takes umbrage with the police at all times, recalling her own dangerous position under interrogation.

Unlike Emily Doe, however, Knox was hiding a true crime of her own. Doe was merely ashamed of her alcoholic excess and her flirting at the frat party with guys when she had a boyfriend elsewhere. Knox totally empathizes with Doe’s lifestyle (remember David Johnsrud and others besides Raffaele when she dated him).

Meredith doesn’t need to articulate. She lived her goodness all along. Actions speak louder than words. Meredith never got to write her memoirs, but they would have been anointed. And truthful, unlike Knox’s clever lies.

Friday, August 07, 2015

Knox Book Phenomenon: PR Reaction Way Too Strident & Only Grows Suspicion She DID Do It

Overkill. A Sure sign of bad PR. As someone once said “An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.”

What’s interesting for Lisa Wilson and myself as True Crime authors and wrieters of Dark Matter and Deceit is that there are not only always two sides to every story, but two factions as well.

When the one faction believes us not to belong to theirs, well, then there is war. Mudslinging, slander, insults – everything except a genuine discussion of the case.

From where Lisa Wilson and I stand, which is hopefully in the middle and on the side of Lady Justice [who is blind, or blindfolded] both factions are mirror-images of each other. Both sides are throwing stones, like the protagonists in the Middle East conflict, both have their grievances, and plenty of stones to throw.

And like the Middle East, the two factions in the Amanda Knox case have been in a war of mostly words for years. Who has won? Amanda Knox seems to have eeked out some sort of victory, but though recently engaged, shows no signs of getting married, and it’s possible the wedding is off.

All is not always what it seems.

Before highlighting a few of our haters, I want to touch on a quick incident that happened on twitter literally in the last day. We had one of our followers enthusiastically report on one of the books she’d read [on Jodi Arias] and promise to give a review the same day. We get bad reviews and we get good reviews, and especially when a book is new, reviews matter. When I followed up with a tweet and then a second tweet, our enthusiastic reader said she felt pressured and obligated and then blocked me on twitter.

What I’m trying to illustrate here is that even those you agree with our work aren’t necessarily above board themselves. What we’re trying to achieve with our books isn’t merely justice in the court of public opinion, but we also want to encourage people to go out and live their lives in an honest, genuine and hopefully happily-ever-after way. One of the ways we interrogate these cases is we try to fathom the underlying psychology of the criminals, and we try to understand these crimes as cautionary tales that we can learn from, and hopefully avoid spiralling into ourselves.

Which is why Lisa and I find the constant lobbing of stones and jibes a little unfortunate. When I confronted one of our supporters with their constant ping pong [block, reporting, badmouthing etc especially on twitter], the response was: but didn’t that debate suit you when we were reviewing your books.

We’ve love our reviewers to be honest, even when they disagree, especially when they disagree. We’d hate our books to be part of a sort of football that is kicked about to score personal points for either side. Our narrative isn’t intended to score points for either team, it’s intended to solve ‘the mystery’ of Meredith’s death. Lisa and I see very little debate on that. Maybe that’s fair given the time since Meredith’s death, but for me this is a crying shame.

I came into this investigation unsure of whom to believe. When you see – as you see in the Middle East conflict – two sides engaged in a tit for tat battle, it’s hard to come away with a sense that either side is right. It’s even harder to trust that either side is going to even be able to be unbiased and fair in their assessment of things. Does that make sense?

Of the 30-odd books I’ve written and co-written with Lisa Wilson, DOUBT [on Amanda Knox] was the first to face accusations of plagiarism. It became a lightning rod for haters and Pro Justice folk, and to date is my most reviewed book on Amazon by far. To be honest, Amanda Knox’s fans are by far the most vindictive and malicious of the folk we’ve encountered through the course of nearly 20 True Crime books. To be honest these people and their underhanded behaviour, even their language, don’t reflect well on their patron at all.

They descend on any criticism of Amanda in organised groups that tag team each other. Do these people not have day jobs? Because it’s hard to believe such tactical and practised viciousness isn’t bought and paid for. Such frenzied attacks inspire responses, and there’s been a lot in the comments section under various reviews – good and bad – of DECEIT. Does that mean people actually read the narrative or are debating it? In a few cases they are, and in a few cases people have contacted us and let us know where they have learnt something or where they disagree, and this is tremendously useful and helpful.

But what about the plagiarism accusation? It was at one time the most popular ‘agreed on’ review when DOUBT was published, so does that mean the plagiarism accusation was actually valid? Or was the accusation a cynical attempt by one side to throw a stone at another side because they didn’t agree with something. Shoot the messenger in other words, forget the message.

Why would someone ignore a message, ignore a narrative unless there’s an implied threat that it could be true?

If it wasn’t true, would anyone really care? But in the context of justice denied, the stakes are rather higher when truth and facts are obscured from the public view. And then it seems, in order to defend the indefensible, one resorts to dirty tricks, like suppression of freedom of speech, and slander. The biggest ironies are the accusations that we are profiting from the tragedy.

Or that we’re slandering someone in our books [that’s the real crime]. It’s ironic when a murder suspect and her boyfriend together earned $5 million for their books, and have numerous and very real slander charges they have faced. In Knox’s case she’s already been found guilty of her false incrimination of Lumumba. Lumumba never got off because Knox said, “Oh, hang on, that’s not right, sorry I made a mistake, it wasn’t him.” Lumumba got off because he had an alibi and someone from the bar came forward to vouch for him. In Sollecito’s case he must still defend allegations of police conduct made in his book [and so must Knox’s parents.

Since Knox was found guilty of slander she served a few years for that. She hasn’t paid restitution to Lumumba [who lost his job and moved to Poland] to date. If Knox is innocent, why isn’t she suing the Italian authorities for wrongful imprisonment? Lumumba did and got a hefty pay-out, so why doesn’t Amanda? Why aren’t we talking about that? But no, we – those of us writing books about the trial – we are the real criminals, we’re the slanderers, we’re profiting out of the loss of the poor victim [no not Kercher, Knox]. This is a crazy inversion of the facts, and only the intellectually weak actually fall for it.

Coming back to Pruett’s plagiarism accusation: was it an exaggeration, was it a lie? Was it based on real plagiarism? Within a few days – subsequent to a phone call to Karen Pruett, and a lawyer’s letter delivered by overnight courier to her work address [she’s a hairdresser in Seattle]– DOUBT was once again available online. We elected to remove any references we made to Pruett’s work ourselves [credited in every instance] and repackage the narrative without including references to Pruett’s timeline in a new book, DECEIT. Of course then the accusation is that our views, since we haven’t referred to Pro Knoxers, is biased and unbalanced. Interesting isn’t it: you quote them and they accuse you of plagiarism, you don’t quote them and they accuse you of being biased.

I only subsequently saw Pruett is endorsed on Amanda Knox’s own website, and was probably paid to research the timeline she produced for Ground Report, which is itself a site facing shutdown due to financial difficulties. The first 80% of her research seemed fairly solid and reasonably unbiased, much of it did reference court testimony, but the last 20% [relating to the crucial timeline of the crime itself] became increasingly dodgy, and part of the original DOUBT narrative highlighted this.

If Pruett had received a hefty payment for her timeline and someone had come along and analysed all of it only to find sections of it to be….well…wanting, well, no wonder she wanted herself excised out of her book. No wonder she wanted the book blocked. So was it really about plagiarism then [because I referenced all quotes to Pruett, and all her quotes were italicised] or was it about Pruett protecting Pruett?

In the end the blocking of the book [for a few hours, perhaps a day or two] by haters created curiosity amongst the Pro Justice folk, and this was invaluable PR for us. Upwards of 40 people asked for a PDF of the original DOUBT manuscript to be sent to them, and at least half sent through carefully considered reviews and feedback. As a result of these reviews and the endorsement of Meredith’s supporters, when DOUBT returned as DECEIT it immediately sold like hot cakes.

Right now it’s currently in the top 20 in Amazon’s ‘Criminal Procedure’ category, and the interest in that book has encouraged us to write a second [DARK MATTER, #15 on Amazon] , and in two weeks we begin with a third [UNDER SUSPICION]. We plan on writing around a dozen more books on this case, and we hope by around midway we will have galvanised a real conversation, not around ‘libellous wankers’ or ‘plagiarism’ or ‘removing Jesus from the Last Supper’ but the most legitimate questions of all:

1. Did Amanda Knox get away with murder?
2. Can the courts in Italy [or the USA or SA] be trusted, even when the world is watching?
3. Is justice up for sale, is it a PR game?
4. If it is, what can we do as the Court of Public Opinion?

As someone sympathetic to Meredith Kercher wisely pointed out in a recent review, the biggest mystery in this case is that it is a mystery at all. My suggestion is we do something more constructive than throw stones at each other.

Friday, June 26, 2015

What No-Show Amanda Knox SHOULD Have Emailed Judge Nencini As Truthful Testimony in December 2013

As is well known, Amanda Knox refused to attend her own appeal in Florence in 2013/2014.

This was a defence appeal by Knox herself and Sollecito against the 2009 conviction by Judge Giancarlo Massei’s trial court. It was not a new trial, or a retrial, or even a prosecution appeal. It was an appeal DEMANDED by Knox and Sollecito.

While Knox refused to attend, she did send a long, rambling email to Lead Judge Nencini. Judge Nencini tartly read out the email in court, and remarked that she could have delivered this in person and answered questions if she wanted it credibly on the record - after all, Sollecito was sitting right there and not scared out of his wits.

1. I have no doubt that my lawyers have explained and demonstrated the important facts of this case that prove my innocence and discredit the unjustified accusations of the prosecution and civil parties. I seek not to supplant their work; rather, even though I am not present to take part in this current phase of the judicial process, I feel compelled to share my own perspective as a six—year-long defendant and causation of Meredith’s injustice.

2. The Court has access to my previous declarations, and please disregard that whole ‘‘aggravated calunnia’’ in which Cassation says i framed Patrick to divert attention, or that pending calunnia charge claiming I falsely accused the police to sabotage the court proceedings. I trust you will not be blinded by these things to come to this verdict. I must repeat: I am innocent. Because repeating it will help dissuade you from studying my lies too carefully.

3. According to my lawyers: I am not a murderer, I am not a rapist, I am not a thief or a plotter or an instigator, at least not until Cassation signs off on it. I did not kill Meredith or take part in her murder or have any prior or special knowledge of what occurred that night, (other than screaming, slit throat, and that the body was moved). I was not there for part of the time, and had nothing to do with it.

4. I am not present in the courtroom because I am afraid. Frederico Martini is probably still pissed that I gave him up; the court and jail officials don’t like my book; and I think there is still an open warrant on me for calunnia. Also, without any employment or housing references, staying here may be tricky. I have faith in your judgement, but am worried you are so poor a judge you will be blinded my the Prosecution’s vehemence. I remember Judge Micheli: he was the wise Judge who found Guede guilty; he was the idiot Judge who ordered Raffaele and I to stand trial as accomplices.

5. My life being on the line, at least until I get parole, and having with others already suffered too much, I’ve rehearsed this story and attentively followed this process and gleaned the following facts that have emerged from the development of this case that I beg you not to dismiss when making your judgement:

6. No physical evidence places me in Meredith ‘s bedroom, the scene of the crime, because I define only that as the crime scene. My DNA mixed with Meredith’s was in the bathroom and Filomena’s room, not Meredith’s. Those bloody footprints cleaned away were in the hallway, not Meredith’s room. Raffaele had one knife, and this other was at his flat, neither of which is Meredith’s room. My lamp on Meredith’s floor had no fingerprints on it, and does not implicate me. That DNA on Merdith’s bra, and bloody footprint on the bathmat only implicates my alibi witness (who refuses to be questioned), not me. Those false alibis, false accusations, details I know about the crime, and phone records are not physical evidence, and did not happen in Meredith’s bedroom. Those ‘‘eyewitnesses’’ the Prosecution produced are not forensic evidence, and do not place me in Meredith’s room.

7. Meredith’s murderer left ample evidence of his presence in the brutal scenario, we made sure of that. Heck, the police couldn’t even find my fingerprints in my own bedroom.

8. No evidence places me in the same brutal scenario, again, which I restrict to Meredith’s bedroom, and only actual physical evidence. The prosecution has failed to explain how—with these restrictions—I could have participated in the aggression and murder—to have been the one to fatally wound Meredith—without leaving any genetic trace of myself. Just because i spend a lot of time talking about it, and am a C.S.I. fan, doesn’t mean I know how to remove evidence. That is because it is impossible. It is impossible to identify and destroy all genetic traces of myself in a crime scene and retain all genetic traces of another individual, or so C.S.I. has taught me. Either I was there, or I wasn’t. My analysis of the crime scene answers this question: I wasn’t there.

9. My interrogation was illegal and produced a false “confession” that demonstrated my non-knowledge of the crime- The subsequent memoriali, for which I was wrongfully found guilty of slander, did not further accuse but rather recanted that false “confession.” Yes, I wrote out a false ‘‘confession’’ that accuses someone else. Just as I testified to the prosecutor in prison and to my family members in prison when our conversations were being recorded without my knowledge. Dammit, give me some privacy.

10. My behavior after the discovery of the murder indicates my innocence, if you think creatively enough. I did not flee Italy when I had the chance, because (in my November 4th email), the police wouldn’t let me leave. I stayed in Perugia and was at the police’s beck and call trying to think of answers for over 50 hours in four days, convinced that I could help them find the murderer, or at least someone who was ‘‘close enough’‘. I never thought or imagined that repeatedly changing my story would fuel their suspicions. I did not hide myself or my feelings: when I needed sex, Rafael ‘‘embraced’’ me; when I was scared of being exposed, I cried; when I was angry that it wasn’t working, I swore and made insensitive remarks; when I was shocked, I paced or sat in silence, at least until I could find a new ‘‘best truth’‘; when I was trying to help, I evaded questions, consoled Meredith’s friends, especially her male friends, and tried to keep a positive attitude that this would blow over.

11. Upon entering the questura I had no understanding of my legal position, accompanying Raffaele to a witness summary session which I was not invited to. 20—years old and alone in a foreign country, I was, legally speaking, innocent and never expected to be suspected and subjugated to torture, and I wasn’t. I was told I was a witness, then after I placed myself at the crime scene I was told I was a suspect. I was questioned for a prolonged period in the middle of the night and in Italian, a language I barely knew, and that questioning includes the time I was sleeping or getting tea. I denied legal counsel- still The Court of Cassation deemed the interrogation and the statements produced from it was inadmissible. In my memoir, WTBH; I was lied to, yelled at, threatened, slapped twice on the back of the head. I told myself I had witnessed the murder and was suffering from amnesia. I told myself that if I didn’t succeed in ‘‘remembering’’ what happened to Meredith that night, I would never see my family again. I browbeat myself into confusion and despair, to sell to the media at a later date. When you berate, intimidate, lie to, threaten, confuse, and coerce someone in believing they are wrong, you are not going to find the truth, but again, that is not what happened here.

12. The police used tea and kindness to coerce me into signing a false “confession” that was without sense and should never have been considered a legitimate investigative lead. In this fragmentary and confused statement the police identified Patrick Lumumba as the murderer because we had exchanged text messages, the meaning of which I let the police wrongfully interpret (‘Civediamo piu tardi. Buona serata’). The statement lacked a clear sequence of events, corroboration with any physical evidence, and fundamental information like: how and why the murder took place, if anyone else was present or involved, what happened afterward—it supplied partial, contradictory information and as the investigators would discover a little later, when Patrick Lumumba’s defense lawyer produced proof of him incontestable alibi, it was obviously inaccurate and unreliable. After over 50 hours of rehearsing the questioning over four days, I was mentally exhausted and I was confused.

13. This coerced and illegitimate statement, which I dreamed up, was used by the police to arrest and detain a clearly innocent man with an iron-clad alibi with whom I had a friendly professional relationship, (at least until I destroyed his life). This coerced and illegitimate statement was used to convict me of slander. Judge Hellmann saw that this statement was coerced, and threw out my calunnia conviction .... I mean he increased the sentence .... never mind.The prosecution and civil parties are accusing and blaming me, a result of their own overreaching.

14. Experience, case studies, and the law recognize that one may be coerced into giving a false"confession” because of torture. I’m not sure why this applies to my case, but damn, it sure sounds impressive.

15. This is a universal problem. According to the National Registry of Exoneration, in the United States 78% of wrongful murder convictions that are eventually overturned because of exonerating forensic evidence involved false “confessions.” Almost 8 in 10 wrongfully convicted persons were coerced by police into implicating themselves and others in murder. I am not alone: Susan Smith and Casey Anthony ‘‘falsely confessed’’ that other people did it too. And exonerating forensic evidence is often as simple as no trace of the wrongfully convicted person at the scene of the crime, but rather the genetic and forensic traces of a different guilty party—just like every piece of forensic evidence identifies not me, but Rudy Guide.

16. In the brief time Meredith and I were roommates and friends we never fought. Roommates, not friends.

17. Meredith was my friend, not that I was her friend. She was kind to me, helpful, generous, fun, and in retrospect, I should have been more of the same. She never criticized me. She never gave me so much as a dirty look, even as I left the place a mess, and even when I flirted with her boyfriend, or she took my job at the bar.

18. But the prosecution claims that a rift was created between Meredith and I because of cleanliness. This is a distortion of the facts. Please refer to the testimonies of my housemaster and Meredith’s British friends. None of them ever witnessed or heard about Meredith and I fighting, arguing, disliking each other. None of them ever claimed Meredith was a confrontational clean-freak, or I a confrontational slob. Laura Masotho testified that both Meredith and I only occasionally cleaned, whereas she and Filomena Romanelli were more concerned with cleanliness. Meredith’s British friends testified that Meredith had once told them that she felt a little uncomfortable about finding the right words to kindly talk tome, her new roommate, about cleanliness in the bathroom we shared. The prosecution would have you believe this is motivation for murder. But this is a terrifying distortion of the facts, as proving motive it not necessary—anywhere.

19. I did not carry around Rafael’s kitchen knife. That’s what men are for, to do the lifting for me.

20. This claim by the prosecution, crucial to their theory, is uncorroborated by any physical evidence or witness testimony. I didn’t fear the streets of Perugia and didn’t need to carry around with me a large, cumbersome weapon which would have ripped my cloth book bag to shreds. My book bag showed no signs of having carried a bloody weapon. The claim that he would have insisted I carry a large chef’s knife is not just senseless, but a disturbing indication of how willing the prosecution is to defy objectivity and reason in order to sustain a mistaken and disproven theory. Yes, i can positively disprove a theory I know nothing about.

21. It is yet another piece of invented “evidence”, another circumstance of theory fabricated to order, because having discovered nothing else, the prosecution could only invent: phone records, false alibis, false statements, false accusations.

22. I had no Contact with Rudy Guide, even though I mention in my book having seen him twice, and a third time in the next paragraph.

23. Like many youth in Perugia, I had once crossed paths with Rudy Guide. He played basketball with the young men who lived in the apartment below us. Meredith and I had been introduced to him together. Perhaps I had seen him amongst the swarms of students who crowded the Perugian streets and pubs in the evenings, but that was it. We didn’t have each other’s phone number, we didn’t meet in private, we weren’t acquaintances. I never bought drugs from Rudy Guide or anyone else. I was having sex with Federico for drugs, which isn’t the same thing. The phone records show no connection. There are no witnesses who place us together, except my statement here. The prosecution claims I convinced Rudy Guide to commit rape and murder, completely ignoring the fact that we didn’t even speak the same language. He has lived in Perguia for 15 years, and I am a student of Italian. Once again, the prosecution is relying upon a disturbing and unacceptable pattern of distortion of the objective evidence.

24. I am not a psychopath. That evaluation in 2008 was unfair, as I didn’t get a chance to prepare my spontaneous answers.

25. There is no short list to the malicious and unfounded slanders I have enjoyed over the course of this legal process. In trial, in the media I have been called no less than:

26. I have never demonstrated anti-social, aggressive, violent, or behavior. Throwing rocks at cars, writing rape stories, and staging break ins are not violent or anti-social. I am not addicted to sex or drugs. In fact, Federico Martini hasn’t given me any since I was arrested. Upon my arrest I was tested for drugs and the results were negative. I am not a split-personality One does not adopt behavior spontaneously.

27. This is a fantasy. This is uncorroborated by any objective evidence or testimony. The prosecution and civil parties created and pursued this character assassination because they have nothing else to show you. They have neither proof, nor logic, nor the facts on their side. They only have their ‘‘evidence’’ against me, and my personal opinions about them. They want you to think I’m a monster because I am telling you they think I am a monster. it is easy to condemn a monster. It is easy to dismiss a monster’s defense as deception. But the prosecution and civil parties think I’m both severely mistaken and wrong. I have condemned them without proof of wrongdoing, and I seek to convince you to condemn them without proof of wrongdoing.

28. If the prosecution truly had a case against me, there would be no need for these theatrics. Never mind that this is my own appeal, and I ‘‘should’’ be demonstrating why the 2009 trial verdict is unjust. If I had a case, there would be no need for smoke and mirrors to distract you from the mountains of physical evidence against me. But because this evidence exists that proves my guilt, I would seek to deceive you with these impassioned, but completely inaccurate and unjustified pronouncements. Because I am not a murderer (yet), I would seek to mislead you into convicting me by charging your emotions, by painting me as an innocent until proven guilty, but not as a monster.

29. The prosecution and civil parties are committing injustices against the Kerchers because they cannot bring themselves to admit, even to themselves, that they’ve made a terrible mistake, namely, that the murder was premeditated. Again, it is my own appeal, but they are persecuting me.

30. The Court has seen that the prosecution and civil parties will not hear criticism of their mistakes, by people who won’t attend their appeal.

31. The Court has seen that the prosecution jumped to conclusions at the very start of their investigation: they interrogated and arrested innocent people and claimed “Case Closed"before any evidence could be analyzed, before bothering to check alibis. As proof of this, they called Raffaele to the police station (at his leisure), to clear up discrepencies in his alibi. Then when he claimed I lied, Rita Ficarra then asked me for an explanation. Those brutes! Then they hauled in Patrick just because in ‘‘confessed’’ several times that he did it.

32. The prosecutor and investigators were under tremendous pressure to solve the mystery of what happened to Meredith as soon as possible. The local and International media was breathing down the necks of these detectives. Their reputations and careers were to be made or broken. In spite of that, they still saw my mistakes. Under pressure, they admitted to as few mistakes as possible and committed themselves to a theory founded upon disproving my mistakes.

33. Had they not jumped to conclusions based on nothing but Raffaele’s changing alibi and my false accusations, they would have discovered definitive and undeniable evidence of not Patrick Lumumba, but of Rudy Guede, Raffaele Sollecito, and Amanda Knox. We would not be here over six years later debating clues my lawyers claim are inconclusive and unreliable. Had we plead guilty we would have been spared the cost, anguish and suffering, not only of Raffaele’s and my family, but especially of Meredith’s family as well.

34. My accusations are unworthy of judicial or public confidence. In over six years I have failed to provide a consistent, evidence-driven, corroborated theory of the crime, but would nevertheless argue that you should not take my life away. I beg you to see through the ‘‘facts’’ and ‘‘reason’’ of what I say. I am innocent. Raffaele is innocent. Meredith and her family deserve the ‘‘truth’‘. Please put an end to this great and prolonged injustice for them.

3. So The Meredith Wiki Stands

In May 2013, as Azoza describes in the post below, Edward McCall and a team of editors and translators began the Meredith Wiki as an effort that stands proudly on its own.

If anything, the Meredith-case Wiki has been gaining speed. What Azoza described represents a fast doubling in size. The volunteer team has grown too, with strong legal and Italian-language skills.

No bias in this freestanding Wiki has ever been proved. It simply carries dozens and dozens of the official trial and appeal documents, most of them now in English, for anyone to take away with them any meaning that they wish.

Our ongoing Interrogation Hoax series, on that huge and nasty hoax, which now has nervous publishers and Knox killer-groupies realizing they may have legal targets on their own backs, could not have happened if the hearing, trial and appeal transcripts had not been made available there first.

And there are many other truths lurking like landmines on the Wiki site.

Wednesday, March 04, 2015

Ten Of The Ways In Which The FOA Petition That The State Department Accepted Is Dishonest

1. Post Overview

It is hard to believe that the Knox PR is guided by a professional - good PR operatives know to just shade the truth.

Again and again in sharp contrast the Knox PR tries to go 180 degrees the other way. Down is up. Black is white. “Don’t believe your lying eyes” stuff.

Instead of making one or two mistakes, it makes hundreds - and then lets them stand when challenged. Many amount simply to childish tantrums.

In Italy all the lawyers (on both sides), and all the judges, and all the media, simply ignore them.

This is made easy enough, as they are usually pushed out only in English in relative safety across the Atlantic.

This is a great example.

2. The ChangeOrg Petition by The Knox PR

The guilt of the pair was confirmed by the Nencini appeal court in Florence six weeks ago. What was particularly telling was the stark two-day presentation of the massive evidence by Prosecutor Crini.

It caused Sollecito to miss the second day and then head off “secretly” to the Dominican Republic to seek help there.

It also caused this shrill and inaccurate petition in which, tellingly, none of the defense lawyers played any part - possibly as they have been highly critical of previous scaremongering.

The petition consists mostly of blustery innuendo. No supporting facts are pointed to. It is inaccurate on the judicial sequence, on official motives throughout, and on Italian law. It omits the prosecution case which took Prosecutor Crini two days to present.

Any Italian court would take this to be an attempt to throw an ongoing legal process through dishonest means, a mafia technique, which is a felony (vilipendio) in Italy.

These are some of the major errors.

1) Unspecified claim of corruption by Italian state

Neither defense team ever claimed this. There was demonstrably no official corruption at any point, and no obvious reason for it. The entire legal process was closely supervised by a series of judges including Supreme Court justices and fully documented.

There IS public proof of corruption (the Hellmann appeal court was subverted) but that was effected by the defense teams.

2) Unspecified claim of abuse of RS and AK

Neither defense team ever claimed this. Both were treated extremely well. Knox conceded that at trial. There was no abuse of the pair, ever, and significantly no paper trail of complaints by either the two defenses or the US Embassy monitoring the process.

In fact the defenses have almost invariably inclined the other way, stating that claims of abuse by the PR are a foolish way to go. In 2008 they publicly requested that Knox stop lying.

3) Claim of abusive interrogation of Knox

Neither defense team ever claimed this. There was no abusive interrogation of Knox on 5-6 Nov - in fact, there was no interrogation at all. In great detail what happened was described at trial.

Knox had insisted on being there, and when asked she agreed to list possible perps, all of whom the cops extensively checked out. She herself incessantly offered explanations on the night (all part-true and part-false) when she was told Sollecito did not support her latest alibi.

She herself insisted on putting them in writing. The investigators tried hard on the night to calm her as she herself confirmed at trial.

4) Legal representation denied

Neither defense team ever claimed this. Knox was repeatedly told she should have a lawyer present when she explosively “confessed” on 5-6 November 2007. Knox herself shrugged off the need for a lawyer on that night as her statements came pouring out - even after Dr Mignini had read her her rights - as multiple witnesses testified.

Knox still cant explain why she twice claimed she headed out alone on the night, leaving Sollecito behind. Or why she lied about Dr Mignini abusively questioning her at her first session finishing at 1:45 am when in fact he was home in bed.

5) The pair held unfairly before trial

Neither defense team ever claimed this. RS and AK had SIX opportunities between November 2007 and January 2009 to get themselves freed or moved to house arrest. They failed each time and all courts gave detailed reasoning. In one of those it was the Court of Cassation which turned them down. Each often blamed the other.

The supervising magistrate Judge Matteini documented an extensive list of evidence against them and ruled that if allowed house arrest they could flee or cause harm to witnesses. This was not based on a single fact as claimed.

6) Guede’s process unfair to them

Neither defense team ever claimed this. The claims about Guede in that petition are upside down. He did not target the pair in 2008 - in reality they went gunning for him and sustained that right through trial on a daily basis to the final appeals.

Claims have been made of a pact between Knox and her Italian former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, 24. It is alleged their lawyers have agreed to work together to blame the murder on Rudy Guede, 21, a part-time gardener from the Ivory Coast and the third accused.

Now, Guede’s lawyers are threatening to call for a separate trial for him alone - well away from the legal teams of the other two whom they fear could prejudice his case.

It is a pact, says Guede’s lawyer Walter Biscotti, that can be traced back to July when Sollecito sent Knox a bouquet of yellow flowers on her 21st birthday which both celebrated in prison.

‘There is a clear desire to make Rudy the guilty party, and it’s clear they will try anything,’ Biscotti said.

7) Guede fingered the pair

Neither defense team ever claimed this. Guede did not testify at the 2009 trial, he just sat there mute and then went away. In sharp contrast, the RS and AK teams introduced witness after witness attempting to do maximum harm to him long before his own legal process was concluded. For example:

(a) The witness who said Guede was in his apartment; but he had not even reported that to the cops, and Judge Micheli concluded he was a publicity hound at best.

(b) The two lawyers who said someone broke into their office; but even they hinted it was really a work-related hit as legal documents had been gone though and some probably copied and removed in a car by several persons.

(c) The head of the pre-school in Milan; but she could not even call Guede’s presence a break-in, because he must have been given a key to get in.

(d) Both defenses labeled him a drifter, drug dealer, woman-molester and habitual thief. No proofs for any of these charges was presented.

This was highly unfair to Rudy Guede. His own legal process was far from over. Neither he nor his lawyers were even in court to cross-examine or repudiate any of those witnesses. The prosecution took zero role - merely observed, and asked zero questions - so in reality it was the RS and AK defenses and not Guede who had an unfair edge here.

8) Courts wrongly tied them with Guede

Neither defense team ever claimed this. The closed sessions at trial in 2009 showed conclusively to the judges that there had been THREE attackers which the defenses simply had to agree to.

The Sollecito defense put Alessi and Aviello on the stand. Bizarrely, the mafioso Aviello pointed AWAY from Guede; he claimed two others had done it; then he claimed the Sollecito defense team had offered payment.

Cassation did not say in ending Guede’s process that it must have been RS and AK along with Guede at the crime. It left who they were open. Cassation simply agreed that there were three

9) Guede did the crimes by himself

Neither defense team ever claimed this, for the reason explained directly above: too much evidence. This was not a one man crime by a rapist or burglar (a burglar at 8:00 in the evening, with cars around and some tenants probably at home in the house?). It was provably a 15-minute torture and humiliation pack-attack, fueled by rage, drugs, and quite probably jealousy.

Knox’s trial and appeal courts both concluded that she plunged in the knife. Sollecito and Guede have shown strong signs of not having not been pre-warned, and remaining sore and resentful of Knox ever since.

10) Omitted is enormous factual evidence

As usual with the PR a huge amount about the case and RS and AK is simply left out. Here is a comment from another thread attacking CBS which explains how this lies-of-omission approach works (or doesn’t work) and the same omissions apply to the petition.

If you watch the numerous CBS videos or read the numerous attacks on Italy on their site, do you spot a trend? CBS 48 Hours is prone to leaving an awful lot out.

Where is CBS’s translation of even one major document? Where is evidence of knowledge of even one court transcript? Where is the real reason the appeals were allowed? Where are the six opportunities RS and AK were given before trial to prove they had no role? Where are the bad times the defense had in 2009? What about the lengthy trial sessions behind closed doors? Where are the numerous conflicting alibis? Where are the numerous whacks at one another by RS and AK? Where is AK’s disastrous stint on the stand? Where is any mention of the dealer Knox screwed for drugs? Where is the current trial of RS for his book? Where is the trial of Oggi for Knox’s book? Where is the Knox interrogation hoax? Where is the Carabineri lab nailing the “science” of C&V? Where is the known corruption of the Hellmann court? Where is the downfall of defense witnesses Alessi and Aviello? Where is the Guede/lone-wolf hoax? Where is the downward spiral of Frank Sforza now on trial in Italy and wanted by US and Canadian police? Where is any fair remark about the Italian system or its staff? Where is the long overdue expose of the Preston hoaxes? Why are Spetzi’s many losses in court not there? Where is the truth about the Narducci 22? Where is Dr Mignini’s total rebound and promotion after Cassation sharply repudiated a rogue prosecutor and judge in Florence? Why does CBS feel such a need to defame so many Italians in English from so far? Where is any mention of the PR’s corrupting very big bucks?

We have no problem seeing the foolish petition remain up - but in their own best interests Knox herself and Sollecito himself should want the incriminating thing taken down. It will merely further annoy the courts.

And they really should tell the blundering Marriott and his online thugs to get lost.

Saturday, February 07, 2015

Sollecito On Italian TV: Seems RS And AK Selling Out One Another Is Gravitating To A Whole New Plane

Nearly 30 instances of Knox and Sollecito selling out one another since 2007 were described here.

In addition to those, their two books also took some subtle whacks, and also there have been some other media instances since. Sollecito took several more whacks at Knox on the national crime show Porta a Porta last night.

That and his bland evasive, nervous manner seems to have done himself harm too. Italy has watched this tired show too often now, and it was Porta a Porta back in 2012 which first surfaced false accusations of crimes in his book for which he is now on trial in a Florence court.

Amazingly, Sollecito admits to stalking and harassing Meredith’s family, which under Italian law (and UK law and US law) for the protection of victims and their families is itself a felony crime. There should be no attempts at communication with them at all. Knox too has been harassing and stalking the family, and dangerously encouraging the more unstable of her followers to follow suit.

Our main poster Jools kindly translated this from the newspaper for Sollecito’s home town. Note the passages in bold.

Raffaele’s Truth

Sollecito guest of “Porta a Porta” told his side of the story about the murder of Meredith Kercher

“Yes, I have thought I could be going to prison, for me this is astonishing. I done nothing, I have nothing to do with it and there is nothing that places me on the crime scene in a factual manner.” Words pronounced by Raffaele Sollecito during the Rai 1 program “Porta a Porta”, hosted by Bruno Vespa. The computer engineer from Giovinazzo is accused of the murder of British student Meredith Kercher, which occurred in Perugia the night between 1 and 2 November 2007.

In seven years there have been four trials. Convicted in first instance trial with Amanda Knox, Sollecito was acquitted on appeal court. But that appeal court decision has been annulled at the Court of Cassation, leading to a new conviction sentence of 25-years. In March, exactly on the 25th, Raffaele Sollecito will face the final instance of the process. In prison for the time being there is only the Ivory Coast national Rudy Guede, who is serving a definitive 16-year sentence. “My life did not changed on the night of the 1st and 2nd November – said Sollecito pressed by Bruno Vespa - but when the investigators took me to jail. Knowing, meeting, making the acquaintance of Amanda fatally brought me into this hell.”

Raffaele’s life is suspended pending the final verdict, while Amanda Knox lives in the United States where she works writing theater reviews for a local newspaper in Seattle and is considered a victim of the Italian judicial system. “I can not answer for Amanda,” Sollecito reminded Vespa and then retraced the events of that night: “From around the hours of 20:30/21:00 I was home - said the accused - and I did not go out to Via della Pergola with Amanda when she went back. I stayed behind sleeping. At that time of my life I was smoking a joint every now and then, especially if I was in company - he admitted - and that night I smoked a very small amount present in my drawer. In fact, the investigators did not find anything because it was a little amount totally smoked.”

This would justify the sketchy memories in relation to those hours. Raffaele Sollecito does not remember when Amanda came back to the apartment but he is certain, “Amanda did not sleep at my place” [Ed note: mistake here, he said Knox did sleep at his place.] About the strange way the American woman behaved in the hours immediately after the murder, Sollecito reiterated that, “Amanda explained during the court hearings of being frightened during the interrogation.”

Just like the American student at the time, Sollecito wanted to stress of having suffered “relentless pressure from the investigators. They told me I would never be released from prison. They kept me 15 hours under interrogation. I fell into contradiction for not understanding what day they referred. They took off my shoes, leaving me barefoot, thinking that those shoes were the ones I was wearing during the murder. Then they admitted my consultant was right after eight months – he stressed - about the shoeprint found in Meredith’s room, while we had already provided that proof after 2 months. It was my consultant to find the inconsistencies of the prosecution.”

The morning the body of the poor British girl was found, Sollecito recounts, “Amanda told me that she saw the shattered window [panes] and the door to her house wide open and that she thought her roommates had gone to take out the garbage. There were a few drops of blood when I arrived. Meredith’s door was key locked and I told Amanda to call her roommates and Meredith.” In any case, following a question by Vespa he specified, “I don’t think Amanda killed her. It doesn’t seem possible. I would have noticed something. This argument seems to me unlikely. But she must respond herself to these allegations, not me.”

Things did not go well and then came the judicial ordeal that still continues and that rather involves him personally. Raffaele is certainly different, now an IT graduate who struggles to find work, but who still wants to shout to the world his innocence after 7 years. He watched the images of his fellow citizens and friends defending him during a broadcast report and recounts of having tried to contact the victim’s family, “I have tried several times to talk to Meredith’s parents - he said -. If the facts are looked at in an impersonal way one understands that a lot of mistakes were made. I sent a letter to Dr. Maresca their legal representative, with not getting any replies. Even my family has tried to contact them, without them ever coming to approach.”

The question mark with which Sollecito will be arriving on March 25, the date of the trial before the Supreme Court, remains the same for a long time: “What motive did I have to hurt Meredith? This is about having justice on what is the truth.” One truth and a justice that now are in the hands of the Roman judges.

In fact as most Italians know Sollecito was interrogated quite briefly that night and the only pressure was from his own phone records, showing he had lied. Knox was not formally interrogated at all. Her ONLY pressure came directly from him.

Our main poster Yummi suggests that what was going on here could be this:

The purpose of his show seems to me to be to point out the “difference of positions” between Sollecito and Knox. I think it is obvious that this is the main “message” of the Porta a Porta show; and I talk not just about the content of his interview, but also the whole setting, the framework including the journalist’s report on the show about the Florence trials in which the “main points” of his defence were described..

Sollecito does not make explicit statements to put more distance between him and Amanda, not more than he already had. But the theme of “difference of positions” is highlighted, and he even draws attention to some known inconsistencies such as the open/closed Filomena’s door.

Indeed he himself makes a declaration contradicting his own statements to the police and to Judge Matteini, and in his own diaries (in the show he says “socchiusa”, but he wrote “spalancata” in his prison diary and this is what he stated to the investigators too); but what he tries to do in the show is to point out himself the inconsistency as something that is responsibility of Amanda, one of the things “she should explain”.

The report - to which his attorneys may well have contributed - points out that the “main defence points” at the Florence trial were:

1) that “Raffaele is not Amanda” (he happens to be implicated because of evidence against Amanda), and

2) that Amanda herself does not place Raffaele Sollecito on the scene of crime in her statements; it is remarkable that Sollecito highlights the content of Knox’s statements from Nov. 5-7 rather than her subsequent claims; and the same defence arguments even imply that Knox does not place herself in the company of Sollecito at all..

Another point that I found remarkable, was when Sollecito points out how it was “a judges’ finding” that he was a “collateral effect” [sic]; I mean it is glaring that he quotes the courts as a source that adds credibility to his theory.

So by the end I thought the setting of this show included “help” given to the journalist Vanni by Sollecito’s attorneys, and I think the purpose is obvious, if we want to see it as a kind of message-in-a-bottle to the Supreme Court on approaching the March 25th hearing.

It is basically a point of law, that is that the evidence against Amanda Knox should not be transferred onto him. This is the aspect he really wants the Supreme Court to review. Amanda Knox has “things to explain” and he should not be demanded to answer for them.

As Knox might now want to point out, there is of course very extensive evidence tying Sollecito to the crime. Consider this and in particular this.

Tuesday, February 03, 2015

To Create Points With More Traction For His Yawnfests, Mr Heavey Convenes A Mock Court…

“Right” said Mr Heavey “I have convened this mock court to replace some of our failing arguments against the mountain of pesky evidence implicating our little cherub, Amanda Knox”

“Amanda of course is innocent. We all know that. Guede was the sole attacker, and Amanda and Sollecito were not there and all of Italy has got it wrong. Let’s begin with some of the pesky items we have not yet shaken, and see if we can explain them away.”

(1) The numerous DNA traces in the cottage itself that were a mix of Meredith and Amanda.

(2) The DNA of Sollecito strongly showing on the bra clasp.

(3) The imprint of the murder weapon in blood on the bed sheet that matched exactly the knife found in Sollecitos kitchen carrying Merediths and Amandas DNA. The same knife Sollecito claimed that Meredith cut her finger on even though she had never been to his apartment.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Why Knox’s Damning Last Live TV Interview Was Attacked And Labeled “Controversial”

1. Overview Of This Post

This is the complete 22 minute video of the interview Knox did with Chris Cuomo on 7 May 2014.

Chris Cuomo asked some excellent questions. CNN itself quickly put online a video of some clips lasting 2 1/2 minutes. On 22 May Vivianna posted an analysis: “The Cuomo Interview: Why This May Be The Last Time Knox Tries To Argue Innocence On TV.”

In her post Vivianna clarified the 2 types of innocence (factual v.s. legal), and found it bizarre that Knox focused exclusively on the ‘legal’ argument. It was a wonderful piece, very sound scientifically, and very compelling.

The full interview (see above and this transcript) makes more understandable why Cuomo was angrily attacked online for asking “unfair questions” on subjects normally made off-limits by the PR. It really rattled some cages.

I will show here below why, and also how it could have rattled even more cages, by highlighting the insights that leaked out barely noticed, and the opportunities for many tougher questions.

2. Analysis Of The Full Interview

In the 2 1/2 minute clip Cuomo looked like a bit of a wimp. But in the full interview, he is actually pretty aggressive in pushing back against Knox’s attempts at convincing answers.

While I am still a bit disappointed that Cuomoe seems to back off from the really tough questions (see below) and like Diane Sawyer seems to be lacking in many of the hard facts (see below) this is definitely a more revealing picture than the short video.

At no time, does Amanda ever say, ‘‘I DIDN’T KILL MEREDITH’‘. And for someone giving a truthful answer, she has to pause and think far too often.

Below are excerpts from the CNN with my own commentary:

Chris Cuomo starts with a brief narrative about the case, and says the police immediately zeroed in on Knox. He cotinues:

1) Not because of witnesses or forensics….

2) She wasn’t distraught enough….

3) She kissed her then boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito outside the crime scene….

4) She did yoga in the police station….

5) Soon the media would come up with a persona… Foxy Knoxy

6) It was the stuff of tabloid headlines

7) It was also, as many would argue, the prosecution’s entire case

8) Despite this, Knox and Sollecito were convicted in 2009

9) It was another 2 years before another court cited lack of objective evidence

10) Last year, [2013] a new trial was ordered.

11) The appeals court convicted Knox again, but based on a new motive

12) There were multiple assailants, and 2 knives and Knox delivered the fatal blow

13) All of this is based on the only person [Guede] whose DNA is all over the crime scene

14) Due to a quirk in the Italian legal system, Guede is due to be released this year, after less than 6 years in jail

An okay attempt, but something of a shortfall. Here is my corrected version of Chris Cuomo’s narrative.

1a) Well, perhaps they zeroed in on her after she wrote statements placing herself at the scene

2a) She wasn’t distraught? Well, her friend f***ing bled to death, but shit happens, let’s get on with life

3a) She did a lot more than just kiss

4a) She only did the splits, not the cartwheel, remember?

5a) The name Foxy Knoxy was her childhood soccer name, which she kept for other reasons.

8a) No, they were convicted in 2009, because of the exact opposite of what you argued.

9a) While this is actually true, Chris neglects to explain why this first appeal was annulled.

10a) It was not a new trial, but a redo of the appeal against the 2009 Massei conviction.

11a) Nencini did not reconvict, he ‘‘confirmed’’ Massei, and motive had little to do with it.

12a) Chris sees to be implying, as this came after ‘‘changed motive’’ that these facts changed as well. However, Massei believed as well there were multiple attackers, 2 knives, and Knox killed Meredith.

13a) Judges and prosecutors believed next to nothing of what Guede said. Only Guede’s DNA? Amanda’s and Meredith’s DNA was mixed in several places. Raffaele’s DNA is on Meredith’s bra clasp

14a) The ‘‘quirk’’ is the short form trial, which got Guede a reduced sentence. And while ‘‘eligible’’ for day release, it is not the same as ‘‘due for release’‘. November 2007 to late 2014 is 7 years, Chris, not 6.

(2:45) Cuomo: What surprised you in the reasons?

(2:55) Knox: I think what surprised me the most is how the court has attempted to account for exonerating evidence. That is really surprising to me. It’s not surprising that they place so much emphasis on circumstantial evidence, as opposed to objective forensic evidence. And I’m really disappointed about that, because the circumstantial clues have all been equivical, have been unreliable, whereas forensic evidence that proves what happened that night in the room is there. (odd smile) It is available to be understood. And that continues to be an incredibly difficult obstacle that I’m having to confront, in proving my innocence.

Is the court allowed to consider circumstantial evidence like phone records, lying, and no alibi? No, they are circumstantial.

What about bloody footprints and mixed blood? They are objective. No they may be in the house, but they are not in the murder room.

What about your shoeprint and Raffaele’s DNA in the murder room? No, it is contaminated.

But isn’t Rudy Guede’s handprints, shoeprints and DNA in the murder room? Yes, and it proves my innocence.

I actually think Amanda Knox would make a great lawyer (for all the wrong reasons).

(3:50) Cuomo: Why do you think this judge goes further than any other, that only that you had it because of DNA around the hilt, but that he thinks that you are the one who actually killed Meredith Kercher?

(4:08) Knox: (smiles) I believe, I mean, I can’t speculate what this judge’s motivations are, personal motivations or otherwise. But what I can say is that, as this case has progressed, the evidence the prosecution has claimed exists against me has been proven less and less and less. And all that has happened is that they fill these holes with speculation.

Yes Judge Nencini holds some personal grudge…. Granted you have never actually met, but maybe he was just miffed you sent an email and hit the talk show circuit rather than attend your own appeal.

Or maybe there is some hard truth in that 350 page report he wrote up.

(4:47) Knox: I did not kill my friend. I did not wield a knife. (for emphasis), I had no reason to. In the month that we were living together we were becoming friends. A week before the murder we went to a classical music concert together. Like we had never fought. And the idea .... I mean, he’s brought up lots of things, crazy motives,

So it takes her a minute to deny killing ‘her friend’, who may or may not be Meredith. And she didn’t kill ‘her friend’ as she says she and Meredith were ‘becoming friends’ Um…. would you kill ‘your friend’ if you had ‘a reason to’?

(5:15) Cuomo: He [Nencini] doesn’t agree with anything you’re saying with regard to the relationship. (Amanda nods). This judge believes that this fight was about money, and that you stole money from your roommate, and that this is what started this violent night. Is there truth to that?

You aren’t sure if you stole money from Meredith?

(5:30) Knox: (pausing to think) Absolutely not. He is getting this from Rudy Guede, who is coming up with these sorts of things for self interest. And the truth of the matter is:... one, I had no criminal record, so I am not the type of person who is going to violently kill someone… (pauses) ... for any reason. And furthermore, I had saved up to go to Italy, and was not in need of stealing any money, unlike Rudy Guede, who was a known thief, who is a known burglar, who did this on a regular basis to survive. And why they would think I (points to herself) was a thief, when in Meredith’s own purse, there was Rudy Guede’s fingerprints…. it’s based on nothing.

Amanda has to think to herself before denying it. And she says that she is not the type to violently kill (is there another type?) but doesn’t say she didn’t do it.

And you don’t have to be a career criminal to commit murder. Many killers are first timers.

(6:18) Cuomo: To step through what he [Nencini] sees as the fact pattern for that night, and literally, it reads like a yes/no list.

(6:30) Cuomo: Were you and your boyfriend hanging outside the piazza that night?
Knox: No
Cuomo: Did you let Rudy Guede into your apartment?
Knox: No
Cuomo: Were you with Rudy Guede in your apartment that night?
Knox: No
Cuomo: Was there a fight over money with Meredith Kercher, witnessed by Rudy Guede?
Knox: No

(7:00) Cuomo: The judge believes the only way he could have gotten in is with keys. He throws out the possibility that there was a break in through the window, that was found in the home you shared. Why do you think he dismisses that possibility as orchestrated?

Chris, you could of course just read the report…

(7:10) Knox: I mean again, why he [Nencini] thinks it? What I can say is that Rudy Guede is a known burglar (pauses) who broke into houses and offices through second story windows, having thrown a rock, carrying a knife, and that these all resembled everything that happened in our apartment. So, why this judge thinks it’s impossible just doesn’t make sense to me.

Except the sexually assaulted and murdered woman .... For my curiousity, where were all these other supposed burglaries?

The judge may think the theory possible, if not for all the evidence that contradicts it.

(7:38) Cuomo: Your roommate said you had a strained relationship. Now that’s a bad fact as we call it in the law. Why would your roommates lie about the relationship between you and Meredith?

(7:49) Knox: They said that we weren’t hanging out as much at the time when the murder occurred. But that was only because I had gotten a job. Meredith’s British friends suggested that maybe Meredith was a little uncomfortable about certain issues about hygiene, but (looks angry), these were not issues that were ever going to lead to any kind of violence. They never ... led to any aggressive communication between us. That never happened.

Sexually assaulting and stabbing is ‘‘aggressive communication’’ now? Wow, interesting use of the English language. And yes you got a job,at Patrick’s bar. But wasn’t it about to go to Meredith?

(8:22) Cuomo: The judge believes that there were 3 people who did this. The said the blood is suggestive of it, that Rudy Guede had free hands. And it he had free hands, he must not have been alone. That the DNA evidence from Raffaele Sollecito is there on the clasp, and that shows that he was trying to take off her clothes or manipulate her somehow. (Knox nods) And that there had to be a third person. And the DNA of footprints that he believes are yours and your boyfriend’s prove that there were three of you in the room that night. Why is he wrong?

For someone who maintains the ‘‘no evidence’’ line, Knox is nodding through much of this.

(8:53) Knox: Well, um, let’s break that down. We have a bra clasp that independent court experts have claimed is not reliable because it was collected 46 days after the crime scene had been gone through by the CSI’s of Italy. And after police had tromped through it and basically completely destroyed that scene. That is not a reliable piece of evidence. Then we have the idea that Rudy Guede would not have been able to attack Meredith because someone had to hold her down.

Amanda, you didn’t address the footprints… And again C&V were not independent nor reliable…. And you know the CSIs compromised the scene how….

(9:35) Knox: first of all, the weapon that they claimed is the murder weapon, is not the murder weapon.

To ask the obvious question - how does she know more than her lawyers and the police? You’d almost think she was there.

(9:45) Knox: An athletic male, armed with a knife ... to overpower a young woman, that happens every day, in this world, and I don’t think that is impossible to be what happened to Meredith.

True, it may not be ‘impossible to be what happened’, but she is not insisting that ‘is’ what happened.

(10:00) Cuomo: and your saying to me tonight is that it is impossible that you were in the room that night, you had a knife in your hand, and that you helped Meredith Kercher?

Odd for an investigative role. He asks if it was impossible, but avoids directly asking if she did it

(10:06) Knox: Absolutely, because my DNA, any trace of me, is not there…. when your talking about traces of me, that they’re attributing to the crime scene, they’re talking about DNA in my own bathroom

Again, Knox goes straight for the ‘‘the evidence is not there’’ argument, rather than directly saying she was not involved in Meredith’s murder. Also, this may be the first time she has acknowledged the bathroom is part of the crime scene. Yay….?

(10:30) Knox: ...or my footsteps which tested negative for blood, that had mine and Meredith’s DNA on the floor between our bedrooms and the bathrooms. Of course our DNA was there, we lived there for a month, it was there. It tested negative for blood, so it wasn’t blood. And so it’s irrelevant to the crime. But we’re talking about the crime that happened in Meredith’s bedroom.

Here Knox is making a strawman argument, saying that the hallway is irrelevant. Odd, considering that unless ‘‘Spiderman’’ Guede would have to have gone through the hallway unless he jumped out the window.

Also curious that (if my understanding is right), it was the shape of the footprints the the hall, and not necessarily DNA itself which was introduced.

Yes, the crime itself happened in Meredith’s room, but the luminol did reveal footprints in the hallway, and there was mixed blood in the bathroom. Is Knox just scatterbrained in this interview, of being deliberately deceptive?

(10:43) If Rudy Guede committed this crime, which he did, we know that because his DNA is there, on Meredith’s body, his handprints and footprints in her blood. None of that exists for me. And if I were there, I would have had traces of Meredith’s broken body on me, and I would have left traces of myself… around Meredith’s corpse.

Wasn’t Sollecito’s bloody footprint on the bathroom mat a major piece against him? Was there not Knox’s DNA (mixed with Meredith) in the bathroom and in Filomena’s room? Was a size 37 woman’s shoeprint not found in the room?

Odd, that Knox’s DNA is in her apartment, which she lived in, but not a single fingerprint…. You know Rudy Guede committed the crime strictly because this DNA, handprints and footprints are there… but logically, the same types of evidence don’t count against you and Raffaele? “If Guede killed Meredith”? You know something we don’t?

(11:15) Knox: And I am not there, and that proves my innocence

Yes, Amanda, but were you really there?

(11;20) Cuomo: Those are the big points this judge makes. There are others, and there is also another man who judged you before, he wants to weigh in, and we have a statement from him.

(11:38) Cuomo: The appeals court judge who set Amanda free says the appellate court’s ruling against her is more worthy of a Hollywood movie set, than a courtroom. In a statement obtained exclusively by CNN, retired judge Claudio Hellmann says:

The Florence Appeals Court has written a script for a movie or thriller book while it should have considered only the facts and evidence. There is no evidence to condemn Knox and Sollecito. It’s a verdict, that seems to me is the result of fantasy and has nothing to do with the evidence.

Judge Hellmann, you were meant to be running a narrow appeal, not attempting a new trial with only the defense presenting. After the way your ruling was trashed by Cassation as perhaps the most incompetent, illegally wide, illogical, and obviously biased that Italy has seen, ever, and considering you were a business judge who caused a disaster on your one other murder case also, you are not really one to give a professional opinion on this. Judge Zanetti neither.

(12:15) Cuomo: Obviously words of comfort to you. What does it mean to hear that from a now retired judge?

Interesting, no complaints are made about Hellmann giving these statements, but Nencini gets a formal complaint for commenting about not severing the appeals?

(12:19) Knox: It gives me a lot of hope. He did the right thing. He appointed independent experts, he looked at the forensic evidence, the objective evidence, he didn’t give more weight to equivocal and unreliable circumstantial clues than needed to be.

Hope, but for the wrong reasons. C&V were not really independent witnesses. Appellate level judges were not supposed to hire experts. Cassation criticised just this action.

Circumstantial evidence can very reliable, and very powerful. Didn’t give more weight to ‘unreliable circumstantial clues’? A judge should not give ANY weight to unreliable clues.

(12:46) Cuomo: However, the judge on top of him, Nencini, looked at what he did, dismisses it out of hand, almost as saying that is why he retired, just look at this decision, and he seems to believe, quote: ‘‘No alternative explanation is conceivable…. that is casting a tremendous amount of doubt on the story that you tell about what happened that night.

Chris gets some basic facts wrong. It is Cassation, not Nencini, who is on top. Nencini is simply another lower level appeal judge. It is not ‘‘almost as saying’’ why Hellmann retired, he WAS forced to retire

(13:10) Knox: This is not a complex case. It’s only complex when you try to find explanations ....

You are right. We should only explore simple solutions.

(13:30) Cuomo: .... that Rudy Guede had to have entered from use of your keys.

(13:34) Knox: That’s not true either. He had a history of breaking and entering second story windows, with rocks, carrying knives. Like, how is that impossible? There is a window below which he could have climbed up from. He was perfectly capable of doing that.

Technically, Knox is right. She could have just left the door unlocked. So Rudy has a type, second story, with rocks and knives? Interesting…

Wait, didn’t I just hear this identical argument just a few minutes earlier? Rehearse much, Mandy?

(13:55) Cuomo: ... [Nencini] believes the convicted killer more than you. What does that mean to you?

(14:02) Knox: (smiles) I don’t know. It’s definitely very disheartening. Because I don’t know (another smile). I’m sitting here having to prove my innocence. It is incredibly disheartening when Rudy Guede was found to be unreliable, when he found certainly to be Meredith’s rapist and killer, they would consider his testimony over mine. There’s no explanation for it, in my mind.

I can explain that. Judge Nencini (and Massei, and Micheli, and Cassation), think more than 1 person was involved.

(14:45) Cuomo: What does it lead you to believe that [Nencini] thinks about you, this judge, as a person?

(14:52) Knox: As a person, well, he says in his report that when the prosecutor describes me as a person who is capable of not only disturbing not only everyone around me, but getting drugged up and .... (shakes head) ... but I am not that person. And the evidence doesn’t show that.

Um…. didn’t your roommates and Meredith’s friends all testify to that being exactly the kind of person you are? The testimony of many witnesses is not evidence?

And while you may not be that person now, were you then?

(15:25) Cuomo: Another thing Judge Hellman says: I THINK THAT THE HIGH COURT WILL BE OBLIGED TO CONFIRM THE FLORENCE RULING IF THEY DON’T WANT TO OPENLY CONTRADICT THEIR COLLEAGUES.

This is idiotic, especially if Hellmann wanted to be taken seriously. The entire point of appeals is so that fresh eyes will review the work of the trial (or lower appellate level) judges, and make sure their findings, facts, logic, and procedures are sound. It would complete defeat the purpose of appeals if the higher court simply signed off on lower court rulings.

(15:37) Knox: (indignant sigh) He was willing to do it. So I have to believe there are authorities in Italy who will be sitting on that Supreme Court panel who will look at the facts of this case, and will do the same thing he did.

So, you are going to corrupt Cassation as well? F*** my life.

(16:00) Cuomo Do you believe you are haunted by first impressions? How you behaved in the aftermath, what they saw as antics….

(16:18) Knox: I think I’m haunted more by people’s projections of their ideas onto me than my own impressions on others, because there’s been an absurd focus on the hours, the seconds I spent outside of my house, of police’s testimony about what did or didn’t happen in the police office. I think it’s true that people seem to have had a kind of tunnel vision…. and that is something I’ve been having to fight against for a long time.

Considering her email to judge Nencini, I am not convinced she knows what projecting really is.

(17:08) Cuomo: Legally, there is only one more step [Cassation]. What do you plan to do to have this come out in your favour?

I have an idea. Perhaps, attend your appeal this time.

However, the answer was cut off by a commercial. Afterwards, it cuts to a clip of the interview of Knox and Cuomo from May 2013. It shows a few clips of Amanda pretending to cry, and repeating how she is afraid.

(18:02) Cuomo: Then you had the anticipation of what the ruling would be. Which was worse: the anticipation of it, or now knowing what the ruling is?

(18:15) Knox: I think it’s now knowing where it stands with the judges, because I had truly believed that this court was going to find me innocent. No new evidence had been presented. I did not expect this, (grimaces) and I’m incredibly hurt and disappointed to read what they’re saying is true but so clearly not. And I guess my only hope is that people are going to see all of the flaws that are throughout the entire document that justifies this verdict. This whole theory that I might somehow be involved in some way with Meredith’s murder is wrong.

You truly believed Nencini would find you innocent? But you skip the appeal and email saying you are afraid?! The horribly flawed document… were you referring to Hellmann’s by any chance?

(19:08) Cuomo: You will appeal
Knox: Yes
Cuomo: You will stay here in the United States for the duration of the appeal?
Knox: Yes
Cuomo: What happens if the Supreme Court confirms this ruling? The case is closed, and you are guilty.

(19:25) Knox: (angry smile showing) from this whole experience, especially in prison, where you have to take everything day by day, now i’m having to take everything step by step. And if I think about everything that I could possibly be facing, it’s way to overwhelming for me to even conceive.

(19:50) Cuomo: Are you able to be present, or are you trapped in 2007?

(20:00) Knox: (smiles) it’s definitely a limbo (smiles again). My entire adult life has been weighed down by and overtaken by this tremendous mess, this, this, (shuts her eyes and grins slightly). On the one hand, I have my life in Seattle. I get to go to school. I get to be with my family and friends. And I’m so grateful to have them. They really helped me get through this. And know there are people who believe me. And on the other hand, there is this huge wait, this huge struggle, and trying to learn each step of the way, what’s so wrong and how I can fix it. And I guess I’m just one of the luck ones? (confused look).

(21:10) Knox: People have looked into my case. I’m not just a forgotten case.

That is totally true. Thanks to FOA and Dave Marriott, your case will never be forgotten.

(21:18) Cuomo: If the case is affirmed, and you are found guilty in final fashion, but the United States decides not to extradite, your life goes on, you can live in the United States, but will you ever really be free?

(21:35) Knox: Absolutely not. No, that is not a liveable ... especially since right now me and Raffaele are fighting together for our innocence. And like I said, I truly believe that it can happen. It’s only speculation that convicts us. It’s evidence that acquits us. And I’m holding firm in that what you’re suggesting might happen doesn’t.

Good luck with that one. You need to not leave so much out if there is a next time.

Friday, January 09, 2015

From David Marriott’s Parrot: Latest Talking Points To Be Beamed At The Unbelieving

David is out of office right now. He is sitting naked with Curt and Chris in the sauna, trying to lose that manic redness which is so telling.

As our incessant jeering at Italy is losing so much traction, David has asked me to keep repeating these new talking points until even the dimmest bunny Karen Pruett gets them..

Talking points #31779

For those of you who believe that Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are sex killers, and who doubt that Rudy Guede did the horrible crime alone, or that Mignini was a dedicated prosecutor, I will fully explain all the discrepencies in the case. Please bear with me.

For those of you claiming that AK and RS are pathological liars, trying to evade responsibility for a horrible deed, you need to see things from their point of view, and keep an open mind. Again, please be patient.

If after reading these explanations, you are still convinced that AK and RS were involved in Meredith Kercher’s murder, then you are by definition too clueless to be helped and part of the problem.

********************************

1. This should have been an open and shut case. According to Amanda (May 2014 interview with Chris Cuomo), Rudy Guede was “known to police” for doing many burglaries where he climbed through second story windows, using a rock to break in, and wielding a knife. It made no sense that he wasn’t the immediate suspect for Meredith’s murder, however, we have 3 alternatives that explain it.

(a) Perugian police truly did not see any connection between second story break ins with knives and rocks, and second story break ins with knives, rocks, and a dead woman. The logical connection was too simplistic to make.

(b) Perugian police did know about Guede’s habit of second story break ins using knives and rocks, but thought it so minor they never bothered to write it up.

(c) Perugia is filled with people who commit second story break ins using knives and rocks. This is normal. It would take time to get around to Guede.

However, I am not sure which explanation Amanda believes is true at this minute, or what is her best truth. Rotate the three of them. And blame the police.

2. Serial ‘‘Spider-Man’’ burglar Guede chose his latest target well. According to Sollecito (Honor Bound book), Guede “knew” that the 4 women in the upstairs part of the house would each have 300 Euros after the end of the month for the rent. He also knew where Meredith kept her money, and he knew it would all be in cash. He knew that the house would be empty for the holiday, and it would be a great opportunity to break in and steal the money around 8:00 pm when everybody is still around.

You might ask how Guede had this inside knowledge, or how Sollecito knew it either, or how Sollecito knew that Guede knew. After all, Guede and Sollecito did not know of each other, right? Though they lived 100 meters apart. And actually only one flatmate was out of town. Hmmm. And 8:00 pm is kinda an odd choice for a breakin time and Filoemna’s window the worst place. Label all such pesky points irrelevant and rush on to the next subject.

3. Serial ‘‘Spider-Man’’ burglar Guede knew about marijuana growing in the downstairs apartments (Honor Bound book). Guede was attracted to the house because he knew about the drugs. And being a drifter and drug dealer (according to Knox, Sollecito and FoAK), it made sense to target the home. After all, who would report their drugs stolen in a home robbery.

So, the drug dealing serial burglar ignored the drugs in the bottom floor, climbed up to the second floor, but didn’t take anything. He just took a dump without flushing, attacked Meredith, and then left. Label all such questions as irrelevant as Guede is obviously such a bad guy. Again blame the police and move to the next subject.

4. Serial ‘‘Spider-Man’’ burglar Guede really is Spider-Man. For those of you who used to watch cartoons, you’ll know that Spider-Man would sometimes mutate into an actual spider, and would grow 4 extra arms, all with super strength. That is how at one and the same time Guede kept Meredith restrained, kept her from screaming, held 2 knives at opposite sides, and from behind assaulted her.

Pesky critics have wondered about this: few defensive wounds, no ligature marks (Meredith wasn’t tied down), no sign she was drugged or knocked unconscious as signs to be skeptical, no DNA. However, they clearly did not watch the right cartoons when they were younger. Six arms is the answer to this.

5. Rudy Guede got a break by testifying against Knox and Sollecito, and his false testimony was the bulk of the reason they were convicted. It also got his sentence reduced from 30 years to 16.

2008 - Guede gets 30 years (short form equivalent of life) from Judge Micheli
2009 - Guede offers to testify against AK and RS, but prosecutors say no
2009 - Sollecito and Knox get 24 years (with extra time for staging, theft and callunia)
2009 - Appeals court reduces Guede’s time to 16 years (24 same as AK and RS, with 1/3 off deduction)
2011 - Guede is finally called to appear at AK and RS 2011 appeal

So obviously Mignini gives Guede the break for testifying, but doesn’t actually call Guede in 2009. Or maybe he gave the break with action pending, hoping there would be an appeal in 2011 and that he might be needed. This is not rocket science.

6. Even though Guede’s plan all along was to frame Knox and Sollecito for Kercher’s murder, he was so freaked out that he asked to sever his case, and go for the short form trial separate from their trial which then involved them framing him.

Yes this does seem odd at first glance. Sollecito supposedly didn’t know Guede. Amanda had no contact, despite once crossing paths (see December 2013 email to Nencini). Three people who don’t really know each other are all convinced the other is trying to frame them. And they are so spooked, none of them agree to testify fully. Really all such questions only for subtle minds and we have only a few of those to convince. Move on to the next subject. And blame the police.

7. Amanda Knox was actually the perfect patsy for the crime. Keep in mind that she had only been in Perugia for about 5 weeks, never did drugs, and was overwhelmed by the emerging events. She was 20 years old, but was ‘‘just a kid’’ (May 2013 interview with Diane Sawyer).

Okay its true police officer Rita Ficarra seemed to contest this, saying that Knox spoke Italian, and during her interviews spoke to her only in Italian (2009 trial transcripts). But be realistic, Knox is not a native Italian speaker, and being a 20 year old kid, didn’t know she was expected to cooperate fully, though actually she entered the conversation with Ficarra very eagerly to point her to seven other possible perps.

8. Knox was also a target to blame for other reasons. She was a foreign exchange student and her single language course would result in a full year of transfer credits (Waiting to be Heard book). However, her mind is easily rattled (though not by use of drugs, dont mention them). She is prone to having visions about vaguely remembering someone killing her friends (her 2007 statement), and isn’t sure if she is at home, or if her boyfriend is. She also has trouble with her truth, her best truth, the real truth, the truth she thinks is closest to the truth.

Yes depending on which pesky statement of hers you read, either she left Raffaele’s alone to meet Patrick, or she is not sure if Raffaele is with them. And she thinks she remembers being outside Meredith’s room, with her hands over her ears to drown out the screams.

Many people have accused Amanda of being a bullshit artist, and of being deceptive. However, she is taking creative writing, and it teaches her to think in possibilities, and that her feelings are what matter not hard facts.

9. Knox’s odd hygiene habits also made her a perfect target. Apparently, she was in the habit of leaving her blood around the home (menstrual blood I assume. Ew.). (read her November 2007 mass email). However, this came back to haunt her as Rudy Guede left tons of Meredith’s blood throughout the upstairs floor, and some of the spots happen to be where Amanda left hers. Ew, I know. Hence the mixed DNA in several places. But Amanda wasn’t a total slob, she liked to wipe everything down out of cleanliness, including her own lamp which, for some reason we forget the explanation of, ended up in Meredith’s locked room. And of course, Rudy, being a man, took a large interest in a woman’s period habits.

Police and prosecutors have claimed that mixed blood and absence of normal fingerprints are evidence of a struggle, and partial clean up. They completely misconstrued Amanda’s quirky ways, and Rudy’s diabolical nature. Here again, blame the police. Foolish police.

10. Much has also been made about the email that Amanda sent on November 4, 2007 to about 25 people. It was a long, rambling, illogical message, and many of the recipients were learning for the first time Meredith was dead. Both the tone, and content raised eyebrows.

But really it makes perfect sense. Her internet plan only allows her so much data, so she must use it wisely like this. Besides, separately emailing all those people would take a lot of time, and hey, she had to get on with her life. Besides, there was some Ooh-la-la with Raffy, and a ukulele that needed strumming, though no time for Meredith’s memorial. Bottom line: just Amanda being Amanda may work here again.

11. Sollecito made a great frame-up victim as well, due to his faulty memory. There was the added bonus that he was the boyfriend of Knox, who also had memory problems. Sollecito’s mind is so scattered, that to this day he has trouble remembering where he was when the murder ocurred.

Pesky facts for us here.

RS claimed he was at a party (not sure which one)

RS claimed he was with AK at his apartment (AK isn’t sure if she read or made love)

RS claimed AK went out and asked him to lie for her (November 2007 statement)

RS refused to say where AK was (Massei 2009 and most of Hellmann 2011)

RS claims he has questions about her account (February 2014 interview)

RS claims he meant AK was only with him that “evening” and not “that night” starting at 9:00 pm (July 1, 2014 press conference)

Obviously, claim what total sh*t Sollecito’s brain is. What better person to blame this on, one who is too confused and lacks any real sense of time. Dump on him.

12. Sollecito received a lot of attention for bringing a knife into the police station, and it was determined later that it could be one of the knives used on Meredith Kercher. Raffaele, quite lucidly, wrote in his book (Honor Bound), what kind of idiot brings the murder weapon to the police station?

Okay, normally we would agree with Amanda, that this case is actually not complicated. However in this case, Knox is also right, things are actually more complicated than they appear (see her September 2013 Daybreak interview). In this case we point out that Guede took Sollecito’s knife, on the offhand chance he would have to kill someone. He then broke into Raffy’s girlfriend’s home, killed her roommate, cleaned the knife, and then returned the knife to Sollecito, all without Raffaele noticing.

13. On a related note, Sollecito also sees things that ‘‘his mind made up.’’ When asked about Meredith’s DNA on his knife, he envisions that Meredith came to his apartment to cook, and that she pricked herself. Even though Sollecito realizes later that it didn’t happen, it still kind of comes up in his mind.

It is not proof of a coverup! RS and AK are just doing some hard drugs that make them vaguely remember or confusedly remember things. Both were on and off high right through to being arrested but we need to hide that. Amanda had a terrific drug source and a cash-free way of paying for them. So blame the police. It was really the pressure from the police, and the pressure of being in solitary confinement, that addled their brains.

14. Guiliano Mignini was the prosecutor in the original trial. He has taken flak in some U.S. circles for trying to railroad two innocent ‘‘kids’’ (in reality 20 and 23), when he should have focused on the 20 year old ‘‘man’’ who really, really did it. Here is proof of this gross misconduct.

During the investigation of the house, Mignini told CSI’s to be careful collecting evidence that would incriminate Guede, but ordered them to mishandle evidence that would incriminate Knox and Sollecito. Apparently Mignini is so wise, he can glance at evidence and know who it came from.

Mignini pressured Knox to incriminate Lumumba, despite his being at home right then. (Read her November 6, 2007 statements). Apparently, when he did come in, his mere presence was so overwhelming, that Knox proceeded to write out two more statements.

Despite what must be a very time consuming job as a prosecutor, Mignini apparently moonlights as Perugia’s Mayor (Waiting to be Heard book).

Mignini telepathically caused Judge Claudia Matteini and Judge Ricciarelli to decide Knox, Sollecito (and at the time, Lumumba), were such dangers that they should be locked up in preventative detention. He also caused the psychologists to give bad reviews regarding AK and RS mental health, despite not being there.

Mignini caused Knox (December 2007 interview), to give wildly contradictory statements when he questioned her with her attornies squirming right there.

Mignini caused Knox (see her June 2009 testimony), to behave in a cold, callous and deceptive manner, and get the Massei court to completely disbelieve anything she said. Hey, blood is YUCKY, but AK only knew Meredith for a month, and good grief she just wants to get on with her life.

Mignini had the Florence Appeals Court (January 2014), confirm the 2009 conviction, despite not being present.

Mignini will likely cause the ISC to confirm Nencini’s ruling (coming in March 2015), despite not being present.

Mignini is as we all know omnipresent and all-knowing.

So to summarize the main points here

Guede is known as a knife and rock using burglar, yet the police don’t suspect him.

Guede naturally had inside knowledge about the large amount of cash inside the home.

Guede is a drug dealer, but didn’t break into the room he knew had drugs.

Guede used his 5 or 6 arms to overpower and restrain Meredith.

Guede got a reduced sentence, for not appearing against Knox and Sollecito.

Guede tried to frame AK and RS, but feared they would frame him.

Knox is just a kid, who didn’t know how to behave properly or speak Italian.

Knox is scatter-brained, but only when asked pointed and direct questions.

Knox has the quirky habit of leaving blood around the house, and wiping everything else clean.

Knox just likes to get it all out, so she doesn’t have to repeat herself a hundred times.

Sollecito has trouble remembering even today where he was during the murder.

Sollecito’s knife was stolen, used in the murder, then returned to him.

Sollecito had a vision that Meredith pricked herself while cooking, it was caused by police pressure, in solitary confinement.

Mignini is apparently the Mayor as well, and has railroaded RS and AK, despite not being involved in the case for years.

So there you have it. Proof to widely propagate that an evil prosecutor and evil police can team up with a serial super burglar, and the result is two completely innocent kids are railroaded for a murder they did not commit.

Tuesday, December 23, 2014

Above is Chris Mellas with Curt Knox, who we are told maybe thinks the way-too-rabid Mellases now damage the prospects of Knox.

Here is some chest-thumping babble on the reliably dishonest website GroundReport by one of Chris Mellas’s crackpot gang, the singularly foolish crackpot Jay.

Today I examine the role of the Italian judiciary in the framing of Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito for the murder of Meredith Kercher, the skillful way Giuliano Mignini used the Italian media to hold the entire judiciary hostage to his career ambitions, and why I believe the Italian judiciary may finally be ready to fully exonerate Amanda and Raffaelle of any involvement in the murder of Ms Kercher.

This case has been out of the hands of Dr Mignini for over five years - if it ever was fully in his hands. He initially took a decidedly mild stance against Knox, who he thought, through drugs and mental problems, had got in over her head and Meredith’s death was not planned.

In fact from the day after Knox’s arrest the no-nonsense Judge Matteini and Judge Ricciarelli led the case all the way to trial. They got all their information directly from THE POLICE. In light of hard evidence and a psychological report they insisted a potentially dangerous Knox be kept locked up. In April 2008 Cassation very strongly agreed.

Pretty bizarre to see a Mignini witchunt in this, or a judiciary about to reverse itself on years of meticulous work.

At the time of the Meredith Kercher murder on November 1, 2007, the Italian judiciary was was locked in a struggle with the Perugian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini. Mignini was facing charges for abuse of office, relating to his ‘Narducci Trail’ investigations.

This is more chest-thumping babble by the crackpot Jay. Dr Mignini rarely even talks to the media and he is regarded by good reporters as especially careful with the truth. The Italian justice system is not only one of the world’s most careful and most pro-victim-rights, it is very popular and trusted in Italy second only to the President who is also the Justice System’s top dog.

Dr Mignini’s past caseload as a prosecutor was quite mundane as Kermit’s meticulous and powerful Powerpoint showed. Perugia and its region of Umbria are among the most prosperous and least crime-ridden in Italy toward which the very popular Dr Mignini contributed a great deal over the years.

Dr Mignini rose to his present seniority of Deputy Prosecutor-General in Umbria because on his merits he consistently excelled. He is often on national TV (among other things ridiculing conspiracy theories and the too-ready blaming of crimes on satanism) and has high-level professional friends and supporters throughout Italy, not least in Florence where he has known senior colleagues since law-school.

Mignini and his colleague Michele Giutarri had both been indicted after Mignini had Mario Spezi arrested and briefly imprisoned, in connection with the Monster of Florence crimes. Spezi was released just three weeks later, after an intense media campaign by his writing partner the American author Douglas Preston.

But rather than back off of his satanic sect Narducci trail investigations, Mignini instead plowed ahead with still more satanic sect cases. At the time of the Kercher murder, Mignini had a case unravelling in Florence against a pharmacist and friend of Spezi’s named Francesco Calamandrei.

When the Calamandrei case was dismissed in 2008, Mignini pressed his next ‘satanic sect’ case against the 20 innocent people in Florence, including Spezi and members of the Narducci family. Mignini had also tried at first to link the Kercher murder to “rites related to Halloween”.... It is these two convictions, these two false convictions, which the Italian judiciary is in my view trying so desperately to protect.

More chest-thumping babble by the crackpot Jay. The vast majority of Italians believe the truth of the Monster of Florence case is as set out in the exceptional book Il Mostro by Michele Giuttari in which there really was and is a shadowy group. It was for proving this that a desperate Florence prosecutor took Mignini and Giuttari to court.

We have shown repeatedly that the fading fiction-writer Preston often does not tell the truth. After his near-arrest for falsifying evidence to seek to make Spezi and himself world-famous for “solving” the MOF case, Preston took off out of Italy like a terrified rabbit and has tried to prove he actually has a backbone ever since.

Italians know that in his one brief formal interview with Dr Mignini Preston melted down. He blubbered and wailed while he lied and lied, and was considered so incompetent and naive he might as well be given a break.

Here from a public document arguing for custody of Mario Spezi (the “brains” of the two, if that is not a stretch) is a conversation between the publicity-hungry Inspector Clouseaus (through public sources we have also obtained the tapes) thinking here that they have made the cops look like foolish dupes:

[The word “passeggiata” (leisure walk) in the context of these statements makes little sense literally; in fact, it is a code word by which both Spezi and Preston mean the police visit to Villa Bibbiani that Spezi and Zaccaria are plotting to trigger by way of a letter they wrote reporting false incriminating testimony, and by way of which they expect the police to find the false pieces of evidence contained in six boxes that they are going to place in the villa. Preston is aware of this intended fraud, and he is happy about it, because he presumably expects that from such an operation their “Sardinian track” theory would gain visibility as a media scoop and he and Spezi would become world-famous from it, sell a lot of books, and make a lot of money out of it. So “passeggiata” is really the police eating their bait, going there, and finding their forged false evidence in the house.]

and the journalist pointed out, interspersing that with chuckles of satisfaction: “No, no, no, but… they are going to do it!!”

and Mr. PRESTON: “Yes, yes… but… isn’t that interesting wow….”

and Mr. SPEZI: “…. We told them to do it !”

At PRESTON’s question about when they would be going to do the ‘passeggiata’, SPEZI answers: “Well… I don’t know but I hope soon” and at a further question by PRESTON, he says: “In.. within.. within the 24th”

and Mr. SPEZI: “That would be beautiful!” still sniggering, and Mr. PRESTON agrees enthusiastically.

After his charging, in conversation n. 17231, Mr. PRESTON calls SPEZI and tells him that they need to speak about it in person.

The criminal operation stands out even more egregiously in conversation n. 16950 of February 13. 2006, between Mr. SPEZI, the deviser of the plot, and his right hand man Nando Zaccaria; and when RUOCCO gives Mr. SPEZI “information” about the name of the person who allegedly attended the villa, Mr. SPEZI himself calls Mr. ZACCARIA, and, while making him understand that Mr. Gianfranco Bernabei had already been contacted and the report-complaint had been given to him, he adds: “So he called me.. not him Gianfranco… the other guy, we have an appointment at 2:30pm, because he knew about the name”; and ZACCARIA cries out: “Beautifullllll!” with satisfaction.

In conversation n. 17095 of February 19. 2006, Mr. SPEZI calls Mr. ZACCARIA again and urges him to explain him (to the Flying Squad chief) thoroughly about the “six small boxes”, that is to convince him that the objects are related to the murders. Mr. ZACCARIA tells him that he already explained it to the other guy and says: “If they go there they must look very well.. at everything…”, and Mr. SPEZI: “What I mean to say… if he finds a hairpin this doesn’t mean anything to him…”, making him understand that he will need to “work” him out.

Mr. ZACCARIA adds in the end: “Then I told him, well while we go… when it’s… when you are going… he says anyway he advises us”. Mr. SPEZI says he agrees and Mr. ZACCARIA reassures him saying he [Bernabei] doesn’t know anything about the case and never dealt with it, then he complains about that the nowadays officers are incapable of doing their job. Thus the chief of the Flying Squad, Dr. Fillippo Ferri, will need to be led by “malicious” Mr. ZACCARIA. Then Mr. SPEZI asks Mr. ZACCARIA to advise him when he goes there (to the Villa). Anyway we remand to the unequivocal content of the conversation, at pages 6, 7 and 8 of request n. 114/06 G.I.De.S.

Back to analysing more from the crackpot Jay.

And Mignini, by continuing to file ‘Narducci trail’ cases, and invoking the same ‘satanic sect’ conspiracy theory, was holding the judiciary hostage to his unprincipled career ambitions. The challenge Mignini presented to the Italian judiciary, was how to stop Mignini’s witch hunt of innocent citizens, without also discrediting the ‘satanic sect’ convictions of Vanni and Lotti in the Monster of Florence cases.

The task of acting as a kind of judicial baby-sitter to Mignini, fell to Judge Paolo Micheli [who] presided over Rudy Guede’s fast track trial in 2008 – which was also the pre-trial hearing against Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito, to certify the case against them as warranting a full trial. The challenge for Judge Micheli, was to walk Mignini back from the edge, but without so completely devastating Mignini’s reputation, that the public might begin to question the validity of the satanic sect theory which had been used in the convictions in the Monster of Florence murders.

This is 180 degrees wrong. Judge Micheli is believed to have been leaned on but ultimately the courts at all levels came round to confirming that Dr Mignini had no choice but to act and he acted quite right. The notion of a satanic sect goes way back and Dr Mignini was more doubtful about it than most.

Judge Micheli’s ruling was scathingly overturned by Cassation, and some of the cases against malicious meddlers were resumed. Spezi has been in court after court - just a couple of weeks ago, he lost yet another defamation case brought by Michele Giuttari.

But Judge Micheli allowed Mignini’s case against Knox and Sollecito to go forward to trial. Had Judge Micheli simply done his job, properly heard and investigated Mignini’s case, the only fair outcome would be full dismissal. What Mignini has pulled off is a kind of blackmail. Mignini wanted his promotion at all costs, and was willing to convict and imprison dozens of innocent people to get his way. Amanda and Raffaele are only two of Mignini’s more recent victims, but there are scores of damaged lives left behind in the wake of Mignini’s lust for career advancement.

The crackpot Jay has defamed American prosecutors too? Probably not. Typical of the cowardly Mellas-Fischer gang he writes in English in the United States in a language and from a distance which makes him feel safe. Dr Mignini has zero record of overzealous or wrongful prosecution, and very, very few cases reversed on appeal, and nobody at all in Italy would buy this defamatory crap.

After Michelli dismissed the case against the Florence 20 in 2010, Judge Hellman’s appeal court fully acquitted Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito for any involvement if the murder of Meredith Kercher in October of 2011.

Hello?! Hellman’s verdict was ANNULED for terrible law, and for illegally trying to repeat the complete trial (absent the witnesses, who he ridiculed) instead of sticking to the few points that had been appealed. Cassation annuls very, very few cases, and reversing this corrupted overstretch was universally seen in Italian law circles as right.

Extraordinarily, Judge Micheli waited over one year to release his motivation report, only doing so about two months after the Hellman court released its motivation report in favor of acquittal. Motivation reports in Italy, are normally due in 90 days. I believe Judge Micheli’s delay in releasing his motivation report, was to allow him the opportunity to conform his report to that of Judge Hellman.

Good grief. What is the crackpot Jay on about here? Judge Micheli was leaned on, and he knew he had got the law wrong, and he presumably expected to be overturned - which Cassation very scathingly did. No wonder his homework was not handed in on time; he feared losing his job and serving time.

The Narducci trail case of the Florence 20, was sent back down absent the element of criminal conspiracy among the defendants. In essence, the case was rigged for dismissal, a fact confirmed by Michele Giutarri in a magazine interview earlier this year. Whereas the case against Ms Knox and Mr Sollecito was rigged for conviction.

A previous cassation ruling against Rudy Guede in his fast track process where Guede’s defense waived the right to challenge the evidence, determined that Guede had killed Meredith along with others. Cassation ruled that Knox and Sollecito’s trials should be bound by that finding, which is grossly and patently unfair.

There was nothing unfair. This is a foolish meme. Cassation simply ruled that two others had been involved and that had been proved. It was proved in the 1/4 of the trial that was held behind closed doors where two recreations connected all the dots of the vicious 15-minute taunting attack on Meredith. Both defenses without argument accepted this.

As irrational as the cassation ruling overturning the Hellman acquittal may seem, there may be a deeper reason behind it. In an article from CBS news earlier this year, Doug Longhini writes: “Following the verdict, judge Hellmann didn’t pull punches. He declared: “the evidence was nonsense.” Suddenly, several prosecutors and judges became the targets of criticism claiming they had mishandled the case from the beginning.” ...

For his part, Berlusconi and his party were at war with Italy’s prosecutors and judges. The Prime Minister was trying to reign in their investigative powers. Prosecutors, for their part, were trying to put Berlusconi in jail.” Seen in this light, the court of cassation reversing the acquittal of judge Hellman is not an act of judicial wisdom, but one of self preservation. To avert a political investigation among their own members, Italy’s court of cassation had to reverse Judge Hellman’s acquittal.

The addled Doug Longhini is consistently out to lunch both on the excellent Italian system and the Perugia case as have been the entire CBS team - no wonder they have said very little for several years.

The courts at all points have simply done the right thing and public opinion has been very solidly behind them. Almost every Italian knows that RS and AK carried out the attack. The courts are not in self-preservation and charges against the toothless Berlusconi still stand.

One can sense the political pendulum swinging first in favor of conviction, then back towards acquittal, then back again towards conviction. And events that unfolded just this year, cause me to believe that the Italian judicial-political pendulum is once again swinging back in favor of acquittal. Giuliano Mignini has received his promotion. In his new role, he will never again prosecute a case or lead an investigation, he is only allowed to sit with other judges on appeals courts. So the judiciary can be confidant there will be no more Mignini led witch hunts.

Only recently in the past few weeks, the last of the criminal charges against Mignini have been allowed to languish, due to statute of limitations. So Mignini is out of legal jeopardy. Despite the fact that the only trial on the merits resulted in a conviction and jail sentences for both Mignini and Giutarri, neither will be going to jail, or being held accountable for the crimes they were found to have committed at their first level trial. In the end, it may be said that the Italian judiciary found it easier to promote Mignini, then to jail him

More babble. Dr Mignini was NEVER in legal jeopardy as everyone in Perugia knew - a judge had signed the wiretap of the prosecutor who unwittingly confirmed a Florence cabal and Dr Mignini and his boss and all his colleagues KNEW he would overturn the spurious conviction on appeal.

Dr Mignini did overturn the verdict in Florence on appeal - the appeal judge’s ruling was the hardest-line “there is no case” - and as with ex-Judge Hellmann, both the rogue prosecutor and the rogue trial judge are now out.

Dr Mignini commendably kept pushing back and he won and won and won against the malicious meddlers in the MOF case. On 3 December the great reporter Andrea Vogt posted this:

Those following the side trials that have spun off or become entangled in the Amanda Knox trial might be interested to know that the now infamous and often-cited abuse of office investigation against Perugia prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, which once made such big headlines in the U.S. and UK media, has officially resulted in no charges, and the investigation has been closed.

An initial conviction stemming from 2006 wiretaps and the Monster of Florence investigation was overturned and annulled in Florence on appeal [in 2011]. The court ordered that the case be transferred to Turin for any future investigation. Earlier this year he was acquitted of nearly all the accusations. The Turin court on Tuesday chose to shelve the last remaining question regarding the wiretapping of a La Stampa journalist earlier this week, ruling it was time barred.

The court’s ruling finally settles the long debated question of Mignini’s record: He has no abuse of office conviction, and there is no longer any active investigation into such allegations.

The other protagonist, Mario Spezi, on the other hand, still has quite a few problems on his hands. His 2006 arrest eventually resulted in the high court (cassation) ruling No. 865/2013 deeming that the following crimes occurred: aggravated interfering with public investigation from Febuary 2004 to summer 2006, aggravated attempted judicial fraud between February and May 2004 and aggravated slander and defamation for naming Antonio Vinci as linked to the Monster of Florence homicides in 2006.

For this last charge, Spezi could be held liable in civil court. But he will never be sentenced for any of these crimes, because after the cassation sent it back down for trial at the appeal level, the appeals court in Perugia shelved the case, ruling that the statute of limitations had passed for any further prosecution. And once again, true justice grinds to a halt, caught up in the gears of Italy’s slow and messy system.

In the meantime, Spezi’s faulty thesis on the Monster of Florence case has landed him in court in several other jurisdictions, where ex-Florence homicide cop Michele Giuttari has been pressing forward with slander and defamation charges related to accusations made about him in his now discredited Monster of Florence yarn that Spezi and his American co-author, Douglas Preston made into a bestseller, pinning the blame on an innocent man in the process. [Bold added here]

And so the plot thickens. Giuliano Mignini was made into a convenient media villain when a high-profile American was being tried across the courtroom from him . . . on trumped up allegations that have since fallen unceremoniously to the wayside. Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, who Mignini initially prosecuted, await the decision of their final appeal before the court of cassation in March 2015.

Back to analysing more from the crackpot Jay.

In short and to sum things up: Mignini has gotten his promotion which he valued above the liberty of the innocent; Mignini’s Narducci Trail investigations are over for good; the Monster of Florence convictions against Vanni and Lotti claiming their participation in a non-existent satanic sect are safely in the past; and the war between the Italian judiciary and Burlesconi is in a state of a truce.

For all of these reasons, I believe the pendulum of Italian politics has again swung in the direction of acquittal, and the Italian judiciary is once again in a position to finally recognize, and exonerate, Amanda Knox and Raffaelle Sollecito.

It may be a good idea for the crackpot Jay to not hold his breath on this. Cassation and the Florence appeal court have been the most hardline on this. And it was Judge Matteini with the police not Dr Mignini who drove the case forward in 2007 and 2008. As explained above, Dr Mignini had almost no guiding hand, and on 17 December 2007 gave Knox a real break. A shot to get herself off - which she herself tanked.

Prior to that long conversation with Knox on 17 December at her request, where Dr Mignini played eminently fair and she had to be stopped as she was incriminating herself, they had barely spoken any words. Once briefly at the house on the day of the crime, once briefly when Knox was shown the knives, and once briefly when Dr Mignini presided over the reading of her rights on 6 Nov. That was it. From the post directly below, see also this:

In a move serially misinterpreted by the dimwits of the Knox brigade, the prosecution, suspecting she was both mixed up and high on hard drugs, in effect offered Knox and her team a way to a lesser count, when they said that the murder could have been a taunting attack which spun out of control.

As explained near the top here, from 7 November it was Judge Matteini and Judge Ricciarelli, not Dr Mignini, in the saddle, and they got all of their information directly from the police. Prior to the Guede and Knox/Sollecito trials Dr Mignini did not guide the process, impossible though that seems for the Mellas/Fischer crackpots to believe.

These facts, and in conjunction with the ECHR soon to take up the conviction of Ms. Knox for Calumnia in the European Court of Human Rights, provides the Italian Court of Cassation, in March of 2015 when they hear the appeal from conviction of Knox and Sollecito, with the opportunity and incentive to quietly discharge the case, and reinstate the verdict of Judge Hellman, finding that Knox and Sollecito are innocent of any involvement in the murder of Meredith Kercher, and innocent of the crime of ‘staging a crime scene’ because the crime does not exist.

Reinstate Judge Hellmann?! He is being investigated for his suspect role in bending the 2011 appeal right now! Again, it may be a good idea for the crackpot Jay to not hold his breath on this.

The appeal to the ECHR in Strasbourg is dead in the water because Knox herself made up all the claims of the supposed violations of her human rights. She has ZERO case. Read this series here.

By the way, for his wild defamations and his contempt of court, Crackpot Jay opens himself to the exact-same charges Knox and Sollecito and Knox’s parents and Sforza all still face.

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Fifty Of The Most Common Myths Still Promoted Without Restraint By The Knox PR Campaign

Fooled ya! Knox’s parents have the mythmaking machine’s pedal to the floor, and arent slowing it

Introduction

I’ve listed the 50 most common myths circulating in the media with regard to the Amanda Knox/Meredith Kercher case and refuted them using as far as possible the official court documents and court testimony.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The Nencini Report Complains About Multiple Instances Of Evidence Tampering And Criminal Slander

[Edda Mellas, Curt Knox and Chris Mellas might be among those knee-deep in the soup]

Already investigations were under way into a PR campaign that in Italian juidicial terms seems little difference from a criminal enterprise.

Now Judge Nencini has included strong complaints in his sentencing report about nefarious behavior. This might now set a number of people to wondering if they have painted felony targets on their own backs, though the seriously dopey ones may have to have it spelled out for them.

This summary of the complaints is from Andrea Vogt’s excellent report in The Week/First Post which also highlights the appeal findings.

1. Interference with the courts

...during the course of Knox’s long and drawn out judicial process, Judge Alessandro Nencini claims, serious attempts were made to tamper with evidence in a way that would favour her….

In the scathing report that spells out the evidence, logic and reasoning that led to his guilty verdict in Florence on 30 January, Judge Nencini also says Knox and her defence tried to tamper with evidence and pervert the truth by introducing prisoners as witnesses, whose testimony turned out to be false and induced by “other interests”.

“It is clear how this trial was subject to heavy evidence tampering, both internally (slander) and externally,” Nencini writes.

He calls the media interest in the case “fertile ground” that led a number of witnesses to give misleading testimony in exchange for their moment in the limelight.

He also slams the first appeal court’s independent experts for having been oddly superficial and illogical in their analysis of the DNA evidence, especially regarding the potential for contamination, noting that controls were in place to prevent it….

2. Vilification campaign post 2011

Knox and Sollecito were released from prison in 2011 after an appeals court sensationally acquitted them of nearly all charges (one charge against Knox stuck: the slander of Congolese pub owner Patrick Lumumba, who she initially blamed for the crime).

The acquittal ruling, however, was later annulled by Italy’s Supreme Court and a second appeal trial in a jurisdiction outside Perugia was ordered. By that time Knox was safe and sound back in Seattle and chose not to return to Italy for her Florence appeal, instead emailing a statement to the judge, proclaiming her innocence. Sollecito attended.

On 30 January, Judge Nencini and a lay panel of jurors issued a guilty verdict and handed down an even harsher sentence: 25 years for him and 28.5 years for her.

Knox went on national television back in the US the following day claiming, as she always has, that she continues to be the victim of a gross miscarriage of justice carried forward by inertia by dozens of Italian judges.

But in his report, Nencini suggests the gross miscarriage was by Knox and her defence lawyers: indeed, he gave her a longer jail sentence precisely because of the gravity of the slander against Patrick Lumumba aimed at getting investigators off her back.

A small group of fervent supporters continue to lobby on Knox’s behalf and earlier this month she attended an Innocence Project conference with other exonerees, even though Italy’s courts have upheld her convictions….

With this latest development… there appears little wriggle- room for either Knox or Sollecito. Italy’s Supreme Court is expected to give the final ruling on the case after September.

This post was about Amanda Knox’s seriously surreal appearance at that conference of the Innocence Project.

We will soon post a helpful roadmap to all the other numerous suggestions of nefarious behavior on which we have posted. We dont mean to isolate out just Edda Mellas, Curt Knox and Chris Mellas.

Amanda Knox with her highly defamatory website and new charges pending for her book is one of the worst offenders.

Friday, April 11, 2014

Why “Buyer Beware” Re Amanda Knox Could Be A Very Good Idea For The Innocence Project

Friday and Saturday in Portland, Oregon, Amanda Knox will try to get support at a national conference of Barry Sheck’s Innocence Project

Dozens of American who claim they were unfairly treated by the American justice system (and in some cases probably were; there is a growing recognition in the US that excessive harshness is a costly, losing policy) will share their stories and give pointers for measures that paid off for them.

But Amanda Knox may be the least useful convicted perp on the planet for the conference to get behind or to learn from.

First, the Italian system is not remotely as she and her colleague Sollecito describe it. It is in fact a system the United States is starting to emulate. If widely adopted the Innocence Project would have a very light load and most of those at the conference would not even have had cause to be there.

Second, the case against Knox and Sollecito is an overwhelming one with far more and far stronger evidence points than UK and US courts normally require for conviction. The 2011 and 2013 appeals were automatic; in the US and UK grounds for allowing an appeal would have been considered lacking.

Thirdly, the Knox-Mellases have run a despicable multi-million-dollar PR campaign which has proved not only ineffectual but massively damaging to many good people, and a source of tension between two countries. The blood money Knox and Sollecito have achieved from their dishonest books and endless money-grubbing create a new world record for illegally profiting from a crime.

Unfortunately, a drooling and irresponsible academic who represents the Innocence Project in Idaho, and who may have criminally inserted himself into the legal process in Italy, may be beating the drum for Knox at the conference.

Barry Scheck and REAL victims everywhere would be best served by (1) kicking the grandstanding academic out of the Innocence Project, (2) learning things from the very impressive Italian system, which could help many REAL victims, and (3) deny Knox yet another forum to frame Italians, mislead Americans, and make even more illegal blood-money .

For Barry Scheck and genuine justice and REAL victims everywhere, distancing themselves from Knox would be the smart outcome.

Monday, March 03, 2014

As Knox & Sollecito Try To Separate Themselves, Each Is Digging The Other In Deeper

One of an increasingly long list of “gotchas” for the prosecution, flowing from their tendencies to talk way, way too much.

In a recent exclusive interview on an Italian TV news broadcast, Sollecito said he has several “unanswered questions” for his former girlfriend, Amanda Knox. This adds yet another waiver to the many different explanations Sollecito provided over the years about the same details.

In the official story, in the part that remained consistent, Knox and Sollecito both claimed that Knox left his flat the morning after Kercher’s murder and returned home, where she noticed the door left wide open and witnessed blood spots in the bathroom. Knox claimed that she found it odd and just assumed that one of her roommates was menstruating and left blood behind. She proceeded to take a shower and returned to Sollecito’s flat and ate breakfast.

“Certainly I asked her questions,” Sollecito explained in his latest interview. “Why did she take a shower? Why did she spend so much time there?” When asked what responses he had for these question Sollecito replied, “I don’t have answers.” In the interview, Sollecito said Knox left his apartment to take a shower, then returned hours later looking “very agitated.”

Yet, in an interview with Kate Mansey just two days after the murder, Sollecito said, “But when she went into the bathroom she saw spots of blood all over the bath and sink. That’s when she started getting really afraid and ran back to my place because she didn’t want to go into the house alone.” This is a far cry from what Knox said in her email to friends and family, Knox wrote:

I returned to raffael’s place. after we had used the mop to clean up the kitchen i told raffael about what i had seen in the house over breakfast. the strange blood in the bathroom, the door wide open, the shit left in the toilet. he suggested i call one of my roommates, so I called filomena.” (6th paragraph).

The discrepancies between Knox’s version and Sollecito’s version is strikingly different. Raffele claims Knox was visibly distraught when she returned and that this was the focus of discussion (i.e. being the first thing they discussed). Knox, on the other hand, claims that she did not even bring up the bizarre circumstances back at her apartment until “after” they finished mopping the kitchen floor.

In his latest statement, Sollecito is clearly trying to distance himself from Knox, believing that there is far more evidence against her than against him.

“You all know that the focus was only through Amanda to her behavior, to her peculiar behaviour, but whatever it is, I’m not guilty for it. “Why do they convict me? Why do put me on the corner and say that I’m guilty just because in their minds I have to be guilty because I was her boyfriend. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Sollecito forgets to mention the bloody barefoot prints at Knox’s apartment, found to be in Kercher’s blood attributed to him, the knife found in his apartment that scientists say was the murder weapon, his DNA found on Meredith Kercher’s bra that was found in her room, even though Sollecito claims that he was never ever in that room, and his own strange behavior, which includes providing a false alibi (saying he and Knox were at a party with a friend on the night of the murder) and several conflicting versions.

But what’s there to question if you [Raffaele] were with Knox the whole day and night of Meredith Kercher’s murder?

It appears as though Sollecito is alluding to the notion that he knows something far more than he is saying; yet, he is being very careful with his words—only providing us with a hint of this. His latest statement is a clear attempt to distance himself from Knox.

Sollecito appeared on Twitter recently, for what he claimed was to answer questions and clear his name. He was very outspoken of his innocence and had no problem in his witty, sarcastic responses to those who questioned his innocence.

However, when I asked him about the Mansey interview he denied claiming that he was with Knox at a friend’s party on the night of the murder.

Sollecito disappeared for a couple of days, came back writing only in Italian, and ceased responding to any more questions.

Is it possible that Sollecito will turn on Knox altogether at some point when the pressure mounts over the next year? Guess we’ll have to wait and see…

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

Our First Reviews Of The Painstaking BBC-3 Report First Aired In The UK On 17 February

Review by SomeAlibi

Watching “Is Amanda Knox Guilty” was a funny thing. I suspect for people following the case closely, on either side, it was a sobering experience. Not because it changed perspectives, but simply to see how quickly one hour passed and the necessary trade offs that had to be made to fit within that schedule. The opportunity cost was a level of detail to which in-depth followers have become accustomed.

Just one example: Sollecito and Knox’s partial alibi that they were checking their emails on the night of November 1st was explained as being challenged by two broken computers. Perhaps, (although unlikely to be the material issue) but where was the much more salient fact that their ISP records showed that was conclusively untrue? Where was the challenge: if you say you’re checking emails to establish part of your alibi against a murder and it is shown to be absolutely untrue, what does that suggest…?

There were many other “clinchers” that had to be let go in the name of brevity. But it wasn’t that sort of documentary - it was neither a case for the prosecution or a case for the defence: it put the main suggestions at the level of detail that was possible and it allowed both sides to speak to the points at that level of detail.

I find it interesting that there has been such a howl of bias from those supporting Knox and Sollecito. Objectively there’s no good ground for it: the documentary allowed both sides forward in equal measure and no pro-justice watcher would celebrate it as a pro-conviction piece.

The arguments were balanced, the video, audio and picture quality eye-opening. For those on the other side, their markedly different reaction appears to be that the documentary has broken the taboo that The Evidence Shall Not be Told. The idea that there is an easy-to-consume piece that puts forth the case and defence equally is seen as a disaster.

The campaign for Knox continues to be obsessed, beyond all things, with trying but now failing to make sure the public doesn’t know the basis of the case. For a long time they hoped to drown out the multitude of terribly inconvenient truths within it by screaming “no evidence”. ‘Is Amanda Knox Guilty’ put the lie to that conclusively, but fairly, and now many hundreds of thousands, perhaps soon to be millions will ask themselves why those supporting Knox and Sollecito have had to adopt this tactic at all.

If they really are innocent, why has the case against them been so comprehensively white-washed in the US?

The conclusion, is rather simple and I saw it encapsulated on a large television screen last night with the repeated clips of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito outside the cottage kissing and “comforting” each other: there for a fraction of a second, shown several times, is Amanda Knox, unable to stop herself glancing at the camera filming her and stealing her gaze away again very quickly pretending she hasn’t.

It’s a look that says everything: furtive, pretending it didn’t happen, immediately covering up in a way that poses a stark proposition: why on earth would you do that if you had nothing to hide? And like so much of the multiple collapsing alibis and non-working answers and the desperately dishonest fingers-in-the-ear “no-evidence” pretence of those supporting her, is a proposition that can withstand no scrutiny.

Review by SeekingUnderstanding

What a relief to watch a very clear and unbiased narrative. The quality of the visual information was top rate - seeing so much original footage, and presented as it was in a logical time sequence.

Even though I was already familiar with the evidence, including the photographic material, I found it very helpful to see it all presented in this way. I appreciated, too, hearing and seeing the excerpts in original Italian (along with English translations). It added even more authenticity.

I hope that, at long last, this will have helped some - or hopefully many- people to see that the two ‘camps’ in this case do not divide into AK supporters and AK ‘haters’. There are the FoA and their followers ...and there are the others who seek the objective truth and justice.

If hate has been generated in some quarters, then the Knox (and Sollecito) camps need to look to themselves and their own behaviour. This programme was important in the tone it set.

I actually found it to be quite lenient towards the defence on a number of counts.

There were several instances where the defence point of view could have been strongly countered by known and established facts, but, bending over in fairness, these were left unanswered.

Here are just four instances :

1) In the discussion around the blood and DNA left in the bathroom - Dr. Gino’s assertion that ‘the blood/DNA ‘could have come from anywhere’ might have been countered with AK’s own declaration that the bathroom was previously clean. Dr. Gino also suggested a very improbable scenario of ‘it could be saliva’ (on the bidet?). Cassation emphatically said that it must be shown HOW any suggested contamination could have occurred.

2) There was a missed opportunity in discussing the knife presumed to be the murder weapon to mention Sollecito’s lame, unreal excuse of ‘Meredith pricked her hand’ etc.

3) Anne Bremner stated ‘Amanda could not have turned overnight…into a murderer’. Attention could have been drawn to many things, both physical events (her predilection for cruel pranks, including a staged burglary in the US, and wild parties, etc), and also many psychological indicators that would have clearly shown how her behaviour has, in fact, demonstrated consistency.

4) In the discussion re the bra clasp, the delay partially being caused by the defence themselves was not mentioned. Also, detailed discussion re the one bare footprint on the bathmat was omitted.

Since there is, in fact, so much evidence, it must have been difficult to chose and balance what did go into the hour long programme. All in all, I feel Andrea Vogt and her team worked hard, and did very well to let the facts speak for themselves.

I hope it will lay a few fictions and myths to rest.

Review by Earthling

What is the “Amanda Knox trial” (really the Meredith Kercher murder trial) really about? Is it about an innocent 20-year-old pretty white girl being railroaded by the medieval Italian justice system?

Or is this actually a murder trial, about the fact that a beautiful, intelligent, ambitious young woman, innocently trying to improve her life by study abroad, was brutally murdered?

I believe it’s the latter, and the BBC3 production gives us one of the first truly balanced reports on this trial.

The filmmaker starts from the beginning, and takes us through the murder, investigation, and various trials and appeals up to the present day. Instead of the breathless “Perils of Penelope” tone (toward Amanda Knox) that most such previous “documentaries” have taken, this one takes a sober look at the actual evidence.

Did you realize that there are luminol-revealed bare footprints in Knox’s size in the apartment? Luminol reveals blood and a few other substances; but those substances can be ruled out because the test was done six weeks after the murder, by which time those substances would have dissipated.

Blood doesn’t dissipate. This documentary shows you those bloody footprints in all their creepy glory, something never shown on American TV before.

“Is Amanda Knox Guilty” also speaks of the actual DNA evidence in the cottage linking Knox to the murder, including five mixed-DNA spots (Knox and Kercher) that tested positive for blood. Both prosecution- and defense-oriented experts are allowed to comment on this evidence, and the viewer is allowed to make up his or her own mind.

My one criticism is that a lot of the evidence against Knox (witness statements, cell phone data, fake break-in) is skimmed over or not even mentioned. Also, because the documentary quotes Rudy Guede’s position at length without any contradictory narrative, it is confusing as to whether the filmmaker might have believed him.

In the end, the filmmaker says, he was convicted of participating in the group murder. However, a stronger statement against his “I’m entirely innocent” defense would have been good.

Other than these quibbles, this is the best documentary on the Meredith Kercher murder case that I have ever seen.

Review by ZiaK

I watched the BBC programme on the Meredith Kercher case hoping for a more balanced view of the case than has been presented in the English-speaking media to date.

The documentary does present some of the evidence against Knox and Sollecito - including the bloody footprints, the mixed blood/DNA traces in the bathroom and corridor, the bra clasp, the knife DNA evidence, the strange timings of phone calls to police, the unlikelihood of the “break-in” being anything other than staged - but omits to point out that none of the other flatmates’ DNA was found in the blood traces, so saying that “it’s because Meredith and Amanda shared a flat” is misleading.

Nor does it point out that, although the murder knife was found in Sollecito’s flat, none of HIS DNA was found on it: it had only Amanda’s and Meredith’s DNA.

The programme didn’t cover the cell-phone evidence, showing that neither Knox nor Sollecito were where they said they were, at the times that they claimed. The programme also repeated the “Friends of Amanda” PR soundbites, such as “there was no evidence of Amanda in the murder room” - whereas the fact that her footsteps tracked blood OUT of the room are actually evidence of her having been present IN the room before it was locked (i.e. at the time of the murder).

Furthermore, in my opinion, the narrator’s voice seemed to evince sympathy towards Amanda, rather than describing events with a passive or objective tone of voice.

As one of the translators who has participated in translating case documents (such as the judges’ reports describing why they came to their decisions), I am only too aware of the extent of evidence against Knox and Sollecito, and I would like to see knowledge of this evidence become more widespread throughout the English-speaking world.

The BBC programme is a step towards this, but in my mind, only a very small step. I hope the pace will pick up soon, and more objective and extensive knowledge of the true facts of this case will be made available to everyone so they can form a rational opinion of the case based on true understanding.

Review by Cynthia

I’ve just watched this, and it’s very good - with a huge amount of footage hitherto unseen (directed by Andrea Vogt).

For what it’s worth, I note the following points:

1) There’s no mention of Meredith’s friends who heard Amanda say ‘she fucking bled to death’ before the fact was known to anyone else. Perhaps they didn’t testify, being too distressed? If so, it’s a great pity, because it seems a veritable clincher that hasn’t been used at all.

2) The bra DNA arguments are quite extraordinary. If we can determine that we all have Neanderthal DNA (tho’ I know a lot of American fundamentalists don’t believe that mankind goes back more than 6,000 years!) I can’t for the life of me see why DNA would be unusable after a poxy delay of 12 days ...

3) The argument that the Luminol traces may indicate not barefoot treading in blood but in bleach seems absolutely unbelievable to anyone who does housework (like me!) Bleach is horrible stuff, and you really, really don’t want to be getting it on your bare skin. Even Amanda, with her vestigial domestic skills, would have noticed if she’d trodden in it.

4) Bremner says Amanda was an honor student. She wasn’t; she had funded herself (not that that’s discreditable). (Also, are honor students unable to write cursive script? The shots of her handwriting show that she can’t do joined-up writing. [Or thinking.] I don’t know whether the phrase exists in American English, but not doing joined-up writing is a term of great intellectual contempt in English.)

5) We saw Amanda’s ‘mask’ speech. This is really interesting - who would even think that masks were being put on them if they weren’t using them themselves?

6) The programme mentions the little-reported fact that another, smaller knife found at Sollecito’s also had Meredith’s DNA on it.

7) The film omits to mention Hellman’s lack of any experience in criminal trials.

8) Every shot of Amanda in the film has her talking about ‘me’ and ‘I’. She never, ever mentions Meredith - it’s all about HER suffering. She never even says ‘the murderer is out there - I wish you’d stop persecuting me and get them’.

Presumably this is because Guede is supposed to be the sole murderer - and nobody seems in the slightest bit worried that there’s no murder weapon with HIS DNA on it! (Yes, there are his turds - but that wasn’t what killed Meredith.)

9) FOA has used the fact that the recent jury took 12 hours to deliberate over the verdict as an indication that they couldn’t agree. But why not just that they were being extremely careful and re-examining everything?

10) Finally, just an observation: Maresca speaks the most beautiful Italian - you can hear every word calmly flowing past.

Review by Miriam

Much appreciated. Outside of the Porta a Porta transmissions on the case, the best I’ve seen.

I understand they had to give both sides, but I felt that the defense came out on the losing side. I thought it funny that it was implied that since they only tested for blood it could of been saliva.

I don’t believe even her supporters would argue that Knox was so quirky as to brush her teeth in the bidet! Or maybe she spit in the bidet, in which case Meredith would have had every reason to complain about her bathroom habits!

Now if only this or something like this would air in the U.S.

Review by Sara

This is actually one of the most objective and well-researched reports I have seen on the case and I am very happy that BBC has managed to be so unbiased.

It presents both sides of the story equally well and does an excellent job of countering the extremely silly “no evidence” argument that the FOAkers like to repeat at equal intervals.

Regardless of what one believes, I think the documentary will at least succeed in convincing most people that there is indeed sufficient evidence against the two of them, and Italy’s judicial system is not crazy to convict people without any evidence.

My favourite part was when the defense DNA expert (can’t recall her name) tried to explain away the mixed blood evidence by saying that one of them could have had a nose bleed, and the other could have cut her hand in the same place leading to mixed blood.

Come on already, what are we? Kindergartens making excuses for not handing in homework? What is the possibility that both of them would bleed in exactly the same places not once or twice but multiple times? I think anyone with a bit of sense can see that they are clutching at straws.

However, I was a bit disappointed that few things were missed out. For instance, the fact that Guede’s footprints led straight out of the house, the fact that Amanda’s lamp was found without any obvious reason in Meredith’s room, Amanda’s extremely odd midnight call to her mom that she conveniently “forgot”, her million showers despite her concern towards “water conservation” etc.

Sollecito’s multiple changing stories were not really elaborated upon (the story in which he went to a party, the one in which he checked emails, the one in which he pricked Meredith etc etc).

Also, inconsistencies between their accounts of various events could have been pointed out (Was Filomena’s door open or close? Did AK call Filomena from the cottage or from Sollecito’s house? etc).

Witness accounts were not given any screen space either. I think touching upon these would have made the documentary even more impressive.

That said, I understand that the team has done the best they would within the limited time they had, and everything just cannot be accommodated within one hour.

So, all in all, kudos to the team and BBC for a job well done.

Review by Odysseus

I though it was a very competent overview of the case. After so much pro-defendant spin in the MSM (no doubt engineered by the American defendant’s PR outfit), it was refreshing to have a sane, measured and rational presentation. The victim deserves no less.

Congratulations to BBC3 and to the programme makers. It’s good to know that the BBC of blessed memory hasn’t been entirely dumbed-down nor intimidated by “partial outside interests”, the latter being director Andrea Vogt’s own description of the forces intent on muddying the waters in this case.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Congratulations To The BBC For A Report Emphasizing The Sheer Extensiveness Of The Evidence

[From the BBC report: Meredith the night before the cruel, deadly attack with her Halloween friends]

This is the painstaking and obviously expensive report by Andrea Vogt and Paul Russell with interviews in London, Seattle and Perugia.

It was aired by the BBC on 17 February. Considerable time is allocated to defense lawyers and experts and the Knox family and Ann Bremner of the FOA taking their best shots at explaining how Knox could maybe have not been involved.

Still, the sheer mass of the evidence remains as the 80,000 pound elephant in the room, lacking any hint of a realistic alternative explanation. Three people committed the horrific attack, including Rudy Guede and two others.

Only Knox and Sollecito remain pointed to by dozens of evidence points as those two others. Not one single evidence point indicates anyone else was involved. The Masssei trial court got it right as the Nencini appeal court just confirmed.

We will enquire if we can embed the hour-long video. But as it may be picked up by US and other foreign media outlets, we will start by simply summarizing it soon. Assessents by those who have already seen it are welcomed.

Much-Admired Feminist On Knox As Ice-Cold In Capanne And Media’s Mixed Performance On The Case

Is Knox guilty? Two long, complicated trials have said yes. Knox’s massive PR machine–much like Simpson’s–says no. That PR machine also ignores the fact that Knox falsely accused a black man of the murder and that he spent time in prison solely because of her accusation that she saw him take Kercher into the bedroom and heard her scream—while she, Knox, did nothing.

Angelina Antoinetti, Knox’s personal prison guard, told reporters after the conviction on Jan. 31 that Knox has reinvented herself for the media.

“Now she’s become this TV star, who cares passionately about what happened to her ‘friend’ Meredith Kercher, and wants the truth to come out. She’s painting herself as a warm, loving human being, but the Amanda I knew was so composed, I never saw her suffering and other prisoners and staff called her the Ice Maiden.”

Antoinetti said Knox “never, ever talked of Meredith or expressed emotion about her death. Whenever Meredith’s face came on TV she didn’t want to know and didn’t respond. She was impenetrable. Underneath the veneers she remains the same controlled woman I knew well in Capanne prison. She was so composed, I never saw her suffering.”

Antoinetti said that Knox “became attached to me. I opened her cell each morning and shut her in at night. She liked English music like the Beatles and always sang. She had guitar lessons, too.”

Knox was “unlike any other prisoner,” Antoinetti said. “I’ve never seen another girl like her, especially so young. She’s magnetic and manipulative. She had no emotions for people, only books. She never talked to other prisoners, she was only concerned about her world. Even when they freed her after the appeal, she didn’t speak to a single person she had just spent four years with, just walked out.

That’s not human, is it?”

And that is the question for many: Who is the real Amanda Knox?

As with the Simpson trial, the media has played a huge role in the Knox case. The U.K. papers labeled Knox “Foxy Knoxy” while the Italian papers played up Knox’s sexual history and the more lurid sexual elements of the case–the assertion that the murder was a drug-fueled sex game gone wrong.

In the U.S. ABC News has been a virtual PR firm for Knox, devoting hours of time on both 20/20 and Good Morning America as well as the actual ABC Nightly News promoting Knox’s innocence. Diane Sawyer did a heavily promoted hour-long interview with Knox when she was released from prison in 2011. And when the Jan. 31 conviction came in, on her ABC Nightly News broadcast, Sawyer led with “the American girl” Amanda Knox–even though Knox is 26. A full six minutes of broadcast time was devoted to Knox–including video of her singing and playing guitar. When has a national news network treated a twice-convicted murderer in such a manner?

The two media portraits of Knox–the sex-obsessed sexual manipulator she’s been portrayed as being by the European media and the pristine girl-next-door innocent-abroad the U.S. media has presented conflict, obviously. But what has been lost in the emphasis on Knox as the victim of the story is the actual murder victim, Meredith Kercher.

Thursday, February 06, 2014

The Hubristic, Meanspirited Campaign: What Sort Of Life Has It Left Knox And Sollecito Now?

Sometimes it can be frightening to see how people’s self-interested choices turn around to bite them instead.

Had Knox and Sollecito simply told the truth to begin with, this case would have been only a nasty local story in Italy, with a bit of light coverage in Seattle and London. They would have had to accept some narrative that explained their involvement and their guilt, and they would have been sentenced accordingly.

They would then have served their time and gotten out. Eventually they would have gone on, perhaps, to live relatively normal lives.

After all, by the time they left prison virtually no one outside the families involved would remember, or much care, what they had done. Their criminal records would follow them forever, of course, but certainly there would have been no public repercussions for an obscure murder in Italy, years in the past.

People live with such pasts: they live their lives and create a future despite their pasts.

Instead, Knox and Sollecito have rendered themselves toxic for the rest of their lives. Everywhere they go, as long as they live, they will be recognized, whispered about, and pointed out by supporters, opponents, and even the relatively uniformed public.

Always.

Already, Sollecito’s Austrian side-trip was busted by someone who, predictably, recognized him. The intense paparazzi effect will eventually wear off, but years from now, whenever either of them does something simple, its effects will live on.

Apply for a library card – instant name recognition, walk through the airport - and someone will realize why that face is familiar. They’d better get used to it because some stranger will always recognize them. At their every life event, there will be a news alert, and someone potentially selling the story or a photo.

They and their families deliberately established an intensive PR effort for selfish reasons: in order to avoid the repercussions of a terrible act.

But this press creation is a terrible beast. Now that it is here it will need to be fed. Always. Get drunk in public - someone will have a cell phone handy; a marriage breaks up - the ex-spouse will tell all. (And, really, neither of them has the kind of money needed to live forever insulated from the vulgar public.)

For the rest of their lives, in everything they want to do, the whole did-they-or-didn’t-they narrative will be weighed in other people’s reaction: Would you hire either of them for anything? Would you rent them an apartment? Elect them to the school board?

All other things being equal, there will always be someone else available, someone equally good who has no awkward history. And everyone will know about that history; they worked hard to make it so.

And I’m not talking about the prejudice against ex-cons. That’s a real thing, and it will have its impact too. All convicted felons have real problems, after all, but few of them have achieved such notoriety, let alone embraced it. What I’m talking about is the impact of even old-news celebrity, of always now, and for the rest of their lives, being tabloid fodder.

Sure, there will always be people (Mad Pax?) drawn to the faux glitter of it all, but a life accompanied only by those wanting to share in your “fame” seems pretty ugly to me. What normal person wants the hassle of becoming involved with something like this?

Furthermore, they will never know when someone they think of as a friend might suddenly start thinking of a way to cash in. There might be a book in it, or at least a juicy article for a tabloid.

This isn’t meant as expressing any kind of sympathy for them at all, by the way. They have blood on their hands and horrors in their heads.

Eventually they may come to some kind of terms with their actions. Frankly, though, I hardly care, for it is not merely their crime that requires expiation. I have been sickened to see the unfolding ruthlessness and the sheer ugliness of their publicity campaign.

At its center their PR beast reveals an utter selfishness that is willing to appeal to the worst in their supporter through appeals to American xenophobia, to racism, and in smears against Meredith, Rudy, and Patrick, as well as the entire system of Italian justice.

The PR beast they created denigrates every other element in the case, while portraying the pair of them as young, innocent, and only guilty of a visible passion for each other and a naïve belief in the police.

This tactic required a media product for sale: the attractive young lovers. Their campaign has forced their names, and images and story in all our faces for years now. They and their families did this entirely voluntarily, and they have seemed to relish the attention it brought them.

They’ve been interviewed extensively, treated sympathetically by those who should know better, and altogether have had much more than their fifteen minutes of fame. But celebrity is a beast that turns on its own.

And, importantly, unlike other famous people – actors, politicians, authors and the like - there is no proper use for their fame. They have nothing real to share with us, only their story. It is, literally, all about them. And that is how it will remain.

They have become a narrative whose next chapter will always be told. The PR beast, for all its reach, will not be enough to keep them out of prison. But the cameras will be there the day they finally leave prison, in case we have forgotten their faces.

And there will be photos when they drive drunk. Or marry. Or divorce.

Their names are out there, waiting for the tagline, waiting for the joke. (“How bad is your new roommate? Well, at least she’s no Amanda Knox.”) There will be no end to it, ever. They will have no privacy, ever. Karma at work is a scary thing. They invited the beast into their lives, and now it will never leave them alone.

[Below: Said to be Amanda Knox leaving home hiding under a windcheater]

Vital media history in 2009

In Italy and Europe generally the guilt of the two is almost universally perceived.

One reason is that although about 1/4 of the trial in 2009 was behind closed doors (quite the opposite of the “tabloid storm” and “show trial” Americans have been told about) Italians in particular got to find out about the long (15 minutes), remorseless, highly sadistic attack on Meredith.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

The Rise And Fall Of “Frank Sfarzo” And How Knox-Mellas PR Eagerly Propagated His False Claims

This post is also available here in Italian. It would be appreciated if the attention of Italian media could be drawn to that page.

My previous posts

Parts One and Two of this series on the increasingly erratic Francesco Sforza (called here Frank Sfarzo, his pseudonym) are here and here.

Summary of conclusions of investigation

1) The Knox/Mellas PR campaign, the Friends Of Amanda, and the activities of online commenters like Bruce Fischer and Frank Sfarzo are one and the same, coordinated to subvert the course of justice in the trial of Amanda Knox.

There is evidence of coordination of stories planted in various media, manipulation of Wikipedia, moneys paid to Frank Sfarzo; they post on his forums, he posts on theirs, and attempts to profit from the murder of Meredith Kercher.

2) The mercenary trickster Frank, who has other agendas and is flexible on the idea of guilt or innocence of the accused, inflames her gullible supporters with stories of ‘rotten’ Italian justice, and, by demonizing the prosecutor Giuliano Mignini, makes them unlikely to ever reasonably look at the concrete evidence of guilt presented in court and confirmed in several trials so far.

3) A series of lies sourced by him and the campaign then makes it into Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito’s books, and from there into the media, which, thinking they have been confirmed by various sources, repeat them endlessly in an attempt to sway public opinion, without doing any fact checking of their own.

(Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, co-authors, The Monster Of Florence, first set attack on legal system in process.]

Introduction to Part Three

As someone who has long been fascinated by politics and the use of PR in political campaigns, it was interesting to see similar tactics used by the campaign that sprung up around the group known as the Friends Of Amanda Knox, or, FOA.

The group, formed to battle inflammatory descriptions of Knox and counter the negative media reports about ‘Foxy Knoxy’ “ was soon indulging in pretty inflammatory rhetoric themselves, mostly through the internet.

Many trial watchers, who were used to the normal progression of murder cases, were shocked to see the virulent online campaign become the story, and translate into a wholesale attack on a foreign country’s judicial system, and an attack on one prosecutor, Dr Giuliano Mignini, and the police force of the city in which the murder took place, Perugia, Italy.

These attacks soon got picked up and repeated by a hostile media, often without the simplest fact checking, but more to do with feeding the public with an endless titillation effect of sex and violence.

Analyzing this wall of noise became an interesting pursuit for many of us. Was there truth to the allegation that these were two ‘innocent kids’ railroaded by a rogue prosecutor with an obsession with Satanism and sex, and was there widespread public support for them, or, just the semblance of it?

[Edda and Chris Mellas. Only picture of them at an FOA event, which Frank Sfarzo claims “they have no connection with”.]

And how and when did Frank Sfarzo become such a big part of the picture? Make no mistake, he was central to the PR effort, as “the only Italian reporter to attend every trial date for the two accused” and apparently a victim of “a prosecutor with an enemies list” who sent police goons to kill him (Frank Sfarzo) which only served as back story for quasi-journalists, to play out their own prejudices and excuse two people already convicted of murder.

This series of articles on the activities of Frank Sfarzo and the FOA was based on the simple philosophical equation: if some should set themselves up as watchers and experts of a murder trial conducted in a foreign language, in a country thousands of miles away, and create reams of ‘expert’ opinion that never was to be tested in court, well, who would watch the watchers?

And how important was Frank Sfarzo, as the only Italian in the mix, to give them credibility by simple parroting and agreeing with their conclusions? Who was Frank Sfarzo, anyway? (For that, see parts One and Two)

Who are the “Friends Of Amanda”?

And how did they come across Frank Sfarzo?

The FOA was originally a “group of parents whose children went to Seattle Prep School with Amanda Knox” included Tom Wright, a filmmaker, Jim Lovering, a marketing specialist, David Marriott, of the PR firm, Gogerty Marriott, and King County Superior Court Judge Michael Heavey, with attorney and CNN legal specialist Anne Bremner as their spokesman.

Seattle Resident and New York Times columnist Tim Egan fired off a series of xenophobic posts, which portrayed the 1st instance trial as an exercise in anti-Americanism. A sentiment regrettably echoed by Washington Senator Maria Cantwell.

[Many well known FOA members are seen here with Frank Sfarzo]

Here is Frank Sfarzo, fully converted to Amandaism by January 19, 2009, and on board on his blog Perugia-Shock: “Friends for Amanda…. A different kind of marines”

Hate and contempt, people judging, people lynching, profiteers, and jackals. But there are as well a few nice stories around the Meredith Kercher case.

There’s Meredith’s family who have not had a word of hate for who ever stolen their daughter’s life. There’s a guy like Rudy—guilty of having killed Meredith or of just not having called the 118? never mind—who lives today in repentance, and had thoughts of sorrow for the angel that we lost.

There are Rudy’s lawyers, Walter Biscotti and Nicodemo Gentile, able to fight with all their strength and not exactly for a fortune. There’s Rudy’s elementary teacher and her son who run to the court to testify for this unlucky guy.

There are people who go work into the jails, keeping inmates busy with any sort of activities. There are Amanda’s guards, first rough but who treat her now like a queen.

There were already people in Seattle helping Amanda’s family. Now we have Anne Bremner and Amanda’s friends. They didn’t stay there just watching and complaining. They chosen to show to the world that the girl they know, the gentle and creative young woman who loves music, the outdoors and children can’t be a killer and today friendsofamanda.org, the website they built for the purpose, is ready.

“Amanda should never have been arrested,” said Anne Bremner, a Seattle attorney and TV legal analyst:

“She’s on trial because Italian officials made a series of serious investigative mistakes and didn’t realize it until they had already leveled false charges. They got themselves in so deep that they refuse to get out.

The Friends of Amanda is not associated in any way with Knox’s family or her legal defense team. It includes members from the U.S. legal and judicial systems, an internationally renowned criminal investigator, a best-selling author, and other professionals and friends who believe unequivocally in Knox’s innocence.

“Many of us are parents who would be grateful for the support of a similar group if our own child was locked up 6,000 miles away in a stranger-than-fiction nightmare,” Bremner said. “Our mission is to present the international public and the Italian justice system with the solid facts and evidence that irrefutably prove Amanda’s innocence, and bring her home.”

“The killer is serving his time,” said Bremner. “He acted alone. Neither Amanda nor Raffaele was at the scene at the time. Zero evidence connects them to this homicide. We are absolutely certain that neither of them had anything to do with Kercher’s tragic death.”

“Italian authorities and the international media have presented a lurid and utterly false image of Amanda, accompanied by fantastical references to sex games and occult rituals,” Bremner added. “Everyone who knows Amanda says these stories are beyond ludicrous.”

Not really “the marines” Amanda’s lawyer was joking about but a nice story of friendship and solidarity. “America as I like it.”

[There’s a picture of Meredith to the back here, along with her accused killers’. FOA and Knox revel in phony ‘tributes’ and ‘honor’ to Meredith, knowing it will pain the Kerchers]

Of course, as we now know, Sfarzo already had been receiving moneys from OGGI, from American networks, and, very likely, the Sollecito family.

I do not agree that he changed his mind about guilt at some point along the way.

It is my opinion, that, having known Mario Spezi from his time in Florence, he returned to Perugia to find ways to attack PM Mignini, and his primary goal was to attack his credibility and affect his Monster Of Perugia investigation through a full bore attack on his handling of the Meredith Kercher Murder case.

My opinion, as I say, but there simply is too much evidence of collusion with Mario Spezi and Douglas Preston, and financial inducements via Bruce Fischer’s gullible membership, as reported earlier.

The rest of his story, and the main point made, that the FOA had no connection with Amanda Knox’s family, (or Frank to the FOA) we know to be an outright lie, as FOA>Chris Mellas>Bruce Fischer. Note Sfarzo’s nearly two month stay with the Mellases.

Judge Heavey and others making regular donations amounting to tens of thousands of dollars to Frank Sfarzo and his never ending demands to them for more.

[Bruce Fischer, center, long chained to Sfarzo, now the toothless ‘attack dog’ of the FOA campaign]

The stories sourced from Frank about ‘Mignini’s Goons’ found its way into the CPJ, Committee to Protect Journalists, who never retracted their claim after finding out that Sfarzo lied to them, that he had assaulted police who were called by his sister when he attacked them for trying to take her away from his clutches. Maybe this had something to do with it:

Even his stories about not receiving any commissions from newspapers turned out to be a lie, he directed the RCS Group to send royalties for all the previous photos and stories to Seattle, and his pleas to send donations to another PayPal account (controlled by his aunt) were not because PayPal was creating problems for him, but because he was trying to avoid taxes. (I saw copies of his e-mails, and he was traveling with copies of his aunt’s ID).

[Frank with Judge Michael Heavey, shortly after his arrival in Seattle.]

Judge Michael Heavey

He is an interesting subject in himself, as one of the most fervid FOA.. Not having been very successful in his political ambitions, and admonished by the Judicial Ethics Council for his advocacy for Amanda Knox, he seemed to have some sort of emotional connection to the case, and maybe, like Bruce Fischer, wanted a springboard for his next venture, which now, grandly, is called Judges 4 Justice.

Here is our full investigation of him along with a video and transcript of his pro-Knox presentation repeated at numerous Rotary Club venues. He even took Frank Sfarzo and Dr. David Anderson to one in Yakima, WA on July 25, 2012.

At one of them (transcript) he repeats the claims of ‘corrupt and dishonest police’, ‘they planted evidence’, ‘kangaroo court’, ‘14 hour all night long interrogation’ canards. He also says elsewhere: “I used to think he (Mignini) was evil incarnate” and, shockingly, says:

The criminals are those who perpetuated a false accusation against two good young people. These police and prosecutors lied, cheated, and stole the innocence of two good young people. They are the criminals.

Why did the Supreme Court of Italy send this case back? Here is the answer

. In an effort to save face, the Italian Supreme Court joined the prosecution and the police of Perugia, and perpetuated these false accusations. The Italian Supreme Court has become criminals themselves. They continue the abuse of two good young people.

My prediction, this goes back for a third trial, there won’t be too much fanfare, and the verdict will be not guilty, insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. The Supreme Court, the Court of Cassation, does this to save face, but in reality, in my opinion, they have disgraced themselves as jurists, they continue to disgrace their country. Is this justice? I think not.

Is Judge Heavey unhinged? You can decide here..

[Frank, the loony Dr. David Anderson, and Judge Heavey at the Yakima Rotary. Anderson still attacks the victim’s family]

Bruce Fischer

Now we all have Bruce Fischer’s M.O. of intimidation and bullying behavior down pat. He is not simply an advocate for Amanda Knox, he is Chris Mellas’s surrogate in the online wars.

His enemies list, his attempts to “out” any anonymous individual who got in his way of building an Innocence-Anywhere-for-hire advocacy group. He promised to apply for charitable status, but became for profit.

His ballistic threats to expose the leakers who came forward on Frank Sfarzo’s behavior showed how important Frank Sfarzo was to their cause, there was no level he would not sink to, this has all been reported previously, in Parts I and II. The relevance, also, of the SfarzoGate Papers is that it sank Bruce Fischer.

But it was in his using of a very few volunteers to create the impression of widespread support that he undid himself. He even patently allowed the use of sock puppet accounts to out people, and to attack PM Giuliano Mignini.

And it was in his use of sock puppets to write articles for Wikipedia, and control the Meredith Kercher, Giuliano Mignini, and Candace Dempsey entries, that he exposed himself, and even, inadvertently, showed collusion with FBI agent Steve Moore.

But where Bruce really out-did himself was where FOA friends wrote numerous articles on the poorly editorially controlled (plus active collusion with the editors) Ground Report to write numerous libels about their favorite target, Dr Giuliano Mignini. (I also once got the ‘special treatment’. No biggie, I knew when I got involved this would happen, and this cause is worth it.)

Here is one comment written by an anonymous commenter “JLS1950” to another, “Heisenberg”:

JLS1950 > Heisenberg −

Sounds to me like Mignini seeks to protect the real traffickers from “competition”. I wonder if that might help shed some light on his connections to Guede…”

And who do you think was the source for this? Frank Sfarzo.

Note: “JLS 1950” is Joe Starr, a Seattle resident who was identified as being Chris Mellas’s best friend, and whose syntax, repeated libels and foul language for the last six years in various forums marks him as being one single awful person, regardless of how many ID’s he appropriates.

[Joel Simon of the now discredited CPJ, which did not fact check Frank’s allegations, then refused to retract after it turned out he lied.]

Example of major false Sfarzo allegation

this is Frank Sfarzo on Perugia Shock:

“MIGNINI WAS THERE AND THE INTERROGATION WAS VIDEO RECORDED” January 31, 2012

“I gave the order, to bring them both in together” –Giobbi revealed at the trial. “So, as soon as the room was ready, with the camera set up and everything, she was called in”

“I was in a room together with the prosecutor Mignini” –Giobbi adds– “We were watching the interrogation, so to study her reactions”.

“So, Giobbi reveals that Mignini was present! He is responsible, then, for everything that happened that night.”

But in the court transcript Dr Giobbi says nothing of the kind. The only other observer was Dr Profazio, the head of the Flying Squad. Dr Mignini was at home in bed.

And in his testimony there was zero mention of any camera. There was no recording. They were merely puzzling over Sollecito’s and Knox’s behavior.

So here’s a legal quiz.

After an investigation into a certain Perugian Blogger’s Blog is concluded, and someone wades through three years of slanderous shite, they find posts that accuse an officer of the court of consorting with drug traffickers, and protecting them, and lying about whether Amanda Knox’s interrogation was recorded, amongst many other false allegations.

In short, if he accuses said officer of the court of committing crimes.

Is that worthy of being sued for defamation, or is it not?

Steve Moore

Shortly after ex-FBI agent became convinced by his wife to look at the case in 2010, he started running illegal background checks on prominent commenters for guilt, as he admitted on his blog. His presentations on the case were uniformly, laughably, unprofessional.

There are more than a dozen posts on TJMK debunking him.

Chris and Edda Mellas

Not only do they organize and coordinate the FOA and Bruce Fischer wings of the Amandic Party, they have made it very clear that they approve and support their activities 100%.

And then they threw a party for the troops, but hid when the infamous group photo was taken, to hide their involvement. Luckily (see image of them above) we do have a picture of them there.

I blame them for their lack of respect and thinly disguised hostility towards the Kercher family, and for allowing their surrogates to attack the Kerchers as being motivated by “greed” when it was the Massei court that awarded the damages! The people who made such comments on their behalf were at that party, and they know that! The Kerchers, with their grace and perseverance, are the polar opposites of the classless Mellases.

(David Marriott, of the Marriott PR firm, who quickly lost control of the campaign as the FOA got into attack mode.)

Frank Sfarzo, again

This is before he realized it might be better to keep his mouth shut and disappear for a while:

“Damn, I’ve heard that pmfrs are slandering me seriously through one of their members, a certain “Tamale”, a certain ”Ergon and various other anonimous (sic, I am not anonymous) slanderers (people so ashamed of themselves that they don’t even have the courage of appearing with their own name and face). Good for my lawsuit. Hey, I didn’t know I was in jail… Thank you “Michael”, hope you got valuable properties…”

No, I’m not ‘anonimous’. My photo and name’s been published on IIP since 2011, and when Sfarzo ran in to me at Cassazione in Rome on the afternoon of March 25, he couldn’t even make eye contact. He spent the whole day texting away (maybe he took a picture of me with his Blackberry? . Then the last I saw of him was on the Porto Umberto I bridge that night at 10:00 PM, driving away in his little Smart Car, hunched down and still texting at the stop light.

On December 16, the lawyers for the Kercher family presented their arguments, in the Appeals court of Florence. They were there, as they had been since the beginning of the trial in Perugia, to speak for the real victim, Meredith Kercher, above all.

Then on December 17, the lawyers for Amanda Knox presented their case, which amounted to more than a rehash of false arguments. It was livened only by an e-mail from Knox, to which as the judge said, if she wants to defend herself, she can present herself in court.

Raffaele Sollecito’s lawyers will present their arguments January 09, and then the prosecution rebuttal January 10. From now on, nothing the few remaining FOA does will make any difference to the verdict, due January 15 approx.

The end

Who knew when I first commented on the case in 2010 where it would lead me? Yes, the case brought together all sorts of people, but in the end, it was the nastiest PR campaign I have ever observed. Amanda Knox, Chris Mellas, Frank Sfarzo, Douglas Preston, Michael Heavey, Bruce Fischer and Steve Moore all seemed to revel in this dirty fight.

One day, they may look back and ask “Was it worth it? Did it help the cases at all? The Monster Of Florence, Knox/Sollecito, against Mignini?” But somehow, I feel they are, and always will be, singularly unaware.

(Outside Cassazione, Aula No. 1, Rome, waiting for the court to return. 8:30 PM, Mar. 25, 2013. This is when the wheels fell off the PR bus.)

Acknowledgement

I want to mention Nell and guermantes, Kermit and James Raper, The Machine, jools, Mr. and Mrs. Fly By Night, Yummi, Peter Quennell, and brmull (who sadly is no longer commenting on the case), and many more. The rest, too many to list here, but gratefully acknowledged.

And also I was fortunate to be entrusted with information from many confidential sources about Frank Sfarzo, and to obtain more when I went to Rome to attend the hearing at Cassazione March 25-26, when the Italian Supreme Court accepted the appeal of the Umbrian prosecutor general Dr. Galati and annulled the acquittal of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Given The Abundant Facts, What Scenario Is The Nencini Court Considering? Probably Not Unlike This

1. The “Innocence/Framing” Campaign

It is rather sad that this case, of the violent murder of Meredith Kercher, has seen a ‘hurricane’ of noise trying to cherry-pick and disprove the more salient facts, and worse, discredit those who investigated, prosecuted and ruled on the case as well as discredit those who continue to emphasize the facts.

Over the past six years there has been a concerted effort by the defendants in this case, and primarily by their families, their ‘groupies’ and their legal consultants, to mount and continue a public relations campaign to frame the defendants as innocent of the crime of murdering Meredith Kercher. This ‘innocence’ campaign has even gone so far as to tarnish the motives of the fine justice officials involved.

The defendants themselves have continuously obfuscated and lied about the more salient facts, albeit inconsistently (their multiple versions fail to match up, and do not match the available facts). Lately Ms. Knox has done a number of (typically unconvincing) interviews, and her parents still seem too intent on defending the fantasy of their daughter’s innocence, all evidence to the contrary.

Mr. Sollecito, for his part, tweets unofficial retractions about statements he made in court. Both have distastefully profited through books that are not much more than a compilation of lies (and which do not offer matching alibis). Meanwhile the legal teams for the defendants have recently leaked ‘favorable’ results from the testing of a new sample on the presumed murder weapon in order to (again) misconstrue the evidence for the general public.

2. Media Misreporting Facilitates

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of this ‘innocence campaign’ has been that far too many journalists have dishonored their professional ethics by failing to do the proper research and objectively report the facts. Journalists to this day continue to misreport the facts, leave out corroborating facts, or worse, blindly repeat the distortions or lies promoted by the campaign without proper fact-checking. By and large, journalists (mostly in the US and UK) have ‘anti-reported’ the case.

This is especially grievous given that there are multiple Court Motivations reports (a unique feature to the Italian justice system) readily available in Italian and English online, in searchable PDF format, as well as several websites like this one that have painstakingly sought to illuminate the vast amount of evidentiary facts.

Those journalists who have failed to correctly report the case, and those involved in this ‘innocence’ campaign, have repeatedly disrespected the victim, Meredith Kercher, and her family. By contrast, the Kerchers has shown great dignity throughout these years, remaining patiently quiet and consistently insisting that the truth be revealed by the Italian justice system.

The endless journalistic failures, and particularly the ‘innocence’ campaign, have also disrespected the Italian law enforcement and judicial systems. By contrast Italian law enforcement has demonstrated substantial deference to the defendants, especially when compared to the law enforcement and judicial procedures of other advanced countries. In response, numerous ‘groupies’ have exhibited pathetic jingoism by repeatedly denigrating a country of 60 million people based on rather uninformed attitudes.

And it is very likely that Ms. Knox and Mr. Sollecito, rather than confess the truth, will continue to obfuscate or lie as much as they can, as well as disrespect the Italian Court and the Kerchers by not being present at the appeal. Their ‘innocence’ campaigns will likely continue to distort or ignore the facts. And worse, journalists and talking-head ‘experts’ will continue to report falsehoods and misrepresentations.

3. All Will Now Be To No Avail

This is because the Nencini Appeals Court will not be listening to any of the noise. The Appeals Court has a very specific program to follow, mandated by the Italian Supreme Court, which has already looked at this case four times (the detainment requests for Knox and Sollecito, the conviction of Rudy Guede and the annulment of the Hellmann Appeals Court ruling). The Nencini Appeals Court program includes:

2) considering the Italian Supreme Court’s Motivations report for the conviction of Rudy Guede, in which Guede was convicted of having a role in Ms. Kercher’s murder, but not the key role of fatally stabbing her, and that he acted in concert with others, and

3) considering Ms. Knox’s voluntary ‘gift’ statement of November 6, 2007, in which she placed herself at the scene of the crime. (This statement follows an earlier verbal and written statement released to the police during a few hours of interrogation in the early hours of November 6th.)

4. Big Surfeit Of Evidence

The amount of evidentiary facts the Nencini Appeals Court will have absorbed is substantial. Unlike the Hellmann Appeals Court, they cannot cherry-pick the facts. Per the Supreme Court, they must consider all the available evidence as a whole, logically tied together like a mosaic. Significantly, one could even leave out the knife and bra clasp entirely as evidence points because:

1) Ms. Kercher was murdered by more than one assailant. This is evident from the wounds she suffered, from the evidence in general and has been consistently maintained by three different trial judges and four different Supreme Court reports.

2) Guede in all his various confessions has consistently hinted and ultimately confirmed the presence of Knox and Sollecito during the crime.

3) There is no plausible scenario for the crime that involves Guede and two or more unknown assailants.

4) All the other evidence found at the crime scene points to Sollecito and Knox being present before, during and after the crime in some fashion.

5) Knox was at the scene of the crime by her own written admission.

6) The break-in was staged and, by obvious implication, only Knox and Sollecito would have any interest in staging the break-in (see my earlier post listing all the problems with the break-in scenario).

There seems no rational way that the Nencini Appeals Court can logically acquit. And Judge Nencini has not ‘pre-announced’ a non-guilty verdict like Judge Hellmann did by claiming that the defendants ‘appear to be innocent’.

The only remaining questions are what kind of dynamics will the Nencini Appeals Court assign to the participants, and what kind of reasoning will the Italian Supreme Court provide, assuming Knox or Sollecito appeal to the Supreme Court.

Having already read the Massei Motivations report and supporting documentation for weeks, this will already be a highly informed judges’ panel. What scenario are they converging on? The following scenario is based on some of the most significant evidence, and overall seems largely unshakable.

5. Scenario Accounting For The Most Points

The Night Before: Halloween

1) Guede lied about meeting Ms. Kercher on Halloween. (No such meeting was corroborated by witnesses.)

2) Guede lied about his whereabouts in the early evening of November 1, 2007. (His claims of having appointments with friends were not corroborated.)

Evening Prior To Attack

3) Around 8:00 PM on November 1st, Knox left Sollecito’s place to go to work. She received Lumumba’s (her boss) text message around 8:15 PM that she was not needed at work. She responded at 8:35 PM while presumably walking back to Sollecito’s apartment. Then she turned off her phone at 8:35 PM. She was seen at Sollecito’s apartment by 8:40PM.

4) Sollecito received a call from his dad at 8:42 PM. (According to the defendant, they discussed the broken trap in the kitchen sink and how to clean the kitchen floor, and about going to Gubbio with Knox the next day. Significant about this is that the broken trap and clean-up likely happened later. See below.)

5) Sollecito turned off his cellphone at roughly 8:45 PM. (typically, neither Knox or Sollecito turned off their cellphones for the night)

6) Ms. Kercher was last seen by her friend Sophie Purton at roughly 9:00 PM going to her cottage.

7) There was no human interaction with Sollecito’s computer after 9:10 PM.

8) Knox and Sollecito were seen at piazza Grimana, by the cottage, at roughly 9:30 to 10:00 PM, by a homeless man who ‘resided’ at piazza Grimana.

9) Ms. Kercher’s phone made three short calls between 10:00 and 10:15 PM roughly, to check voicemail, a possible attempt to call a bank, and possibly an MMS message.

10) A car broke down near the gate of the cottage at 10:30 PM.

11) Knox and Sollecito were seen at piazza Grimana, by the cottage, at roughly 11:00 PM, again by the same homeless man. He noted they went several times to the railing of the piazza to look down beyond it. (The piazza overlooks the gate of the cottage.)

12) A tow truck came at approximately 11:00 PM to tow the car. The driver of the truck noted a dark-colored car parked in front of the gate of the cottage, which he noted was slightly open. At approximately 11:15 PM the tow truck left and the family in the broken down car departed the area with other friends in a second car. (Sollecito had a dark colored Audi.) No screams were heard and no one noticed Guede, Sollecito or Knox pass through the gate.

13) Sollecito’s dad sent Sollecito an SMS at 11:15PM. The message was not received by Sollecito’s cellphone until roughly 6:00 AM following morning.

The Attack Upon Meredith

14) Knox likely let Sollecito and Guede into the cottage after 11:15 PM, after the tow truck and car had left. Guede went to use the large bathroom and failed to flush his feces. The following is an assumed sequence:

15) Ms. Kercher was restrained in her room and her screams were muffled. (There was bruising on Ms. Kercher’s nose, mouth, lips and chin, suggesting her mouth was covered by one or more persons; only one scream was ever heard from the cottage; Ms. Kercher was familiar with martial arts maneuvers and likely vigorously tried to defend herself)

16) Ms. Kercher was choked and her head likely banged against the wall. (Bruises on Ms. Kercher’s neck suggest she was choked with small hands; Ms. Kercher had bruises to her scalp.)

17) Ms. Kercher’s jeans may have been partially removed to restrain her legs and feet. (There were few bruises to Ms. Kerchers legs and feet, including no signs of ligature. This suggests her legs were immobilized in some other fashion.)

20) Ms. Kercher’s sweatshirt was removed and two layers of shirts she had on were rolled up to her neck.

21) Guede left DNA traces on Ms. Kercher’s bra.

22) At least three different types of shoe prints were left on the floor in Ms. Kercher’s room on postcards, papers and the pillowcase. None of these matched Ms. Kercher’s shoes found in her room.

23) A witness heard a man and woman yelling from the direction of the cottage.

24) Ms. Kercher was pricked and stabbed with a small knife in the right side of her neck.

25) Ms. Kercher likely freed her right hand and sustained small cuts. She may have punched Knox in the nose or mouth.

26) Ms. Kercher likely freed her left hand and sustained small cuts. She may have grabbed Knox’s hair, while perhaps ripping off an earring from Knox. (Crime scene photos show blonde hair strands in Ms. Kercher’s left hand)

27) Ms. Kercher was able to scream at the top of her lungs. Two witnesses heard the scream. One witness believed it was around 11:30 PM when she heard it.

28) Ms. Kercher was pricked on her neck and chin with a knife. She was stabbed on the left side of her neck with a large knife. Her neck was roughly 16” off the floor, as suggested by a blood spray pattern on the wardrobe door close to where she was found.

29) A bloody shoeprint fitting Knox’s shoe size was left on the pillowcase. Shoeprints matching Guede’s shoes were also found on the pillowcase.

Right After The Attack

30) Guede may have gone to the bathroom to get two towels to staunch the blood. Guede confessed to this, though no DNA traces of his are found on the towels. Guede’s bloody shoeprints were found around Ms. Kercher’s body, and his bloody hand print was found on the pillow.

31) At this point, Knox may have gone to the small bathroom to check a wound. Knox left traces of her blood mixed with Ms. Kercher’s blood in the bidet, edge of the sink and Q-tip box in the small bathroom. Knox left an additional blood trace on the faucet.

32) Guede handled Ms. Kercher’s purse, leaving DNA traces of himself and Ms. Kercher, likely with Ms. Kercher’s blood. (Traces of Guede’s DNA was found on the zipper of the purse. Because the trace contains blood it was likely left after Ms. Kercher started bleeding.)

33) Guede left bloody shoeprints leading straight down the corridor and out of the cottage.

34) A witness heard someone running on the metal stair of the car park shortly after she heard the scream.

35) The same witness also heard running footsteps on the cottage pebble driveway at roughly the same time.

36) The boyfriend of another witness was bumped into by someone ‘with dark skin’ running up the stone stairs, though the time is unclear.

37) Another witness heard people running in the street that wraps behind the car park.

38) Sollecito likely tossed Ms. Kercher’s cellphones from his car into a nearby garden 1 km away from the cottage at around midnight.

39) Guede was seen at the Domus night club around 2 AM.

Evidence, Manipulated Or Overlooked

Likely sometime later during the night Sollecito and Knox returned to the cottage to eliminate evidence and frame Guede for the crime. In so doing:

40) Sollecito left a partial bloody footprint on the bathmat.

41) Sollecito left his DNA on Ms. Kercher’s bra clasp after removing the bra. (Given blood patterns on the bra, the bra may have been removed after Ms. Kercher had died and certainly after she had been stabbed on the left side)

43) Knox left two bloody footprints in the corridor. One of these contained her blood as well as Ms. Kercher’s blood. (Knox likely bled during or after the assault and may have stepped in her own blood)

44) Knox left a trace of her blood mixed with Ms. Kercher’s blood on the floor in Romanelli’s room.

45) Knox likely threw Romanelli’s clothes on the floor. She likely used an inordinately large rock to break the window with the outer shutters closed. She likely placed some of the broken glass on the window sill to fake a break-in. (Romanelli and the Postal Police found glass on top of Romanelli’s clothes and laptop, suggesting the room was ransacked and then the window was broken.)

48) Knox likely left her only room lamp in Ms. Kercher’s room by accident. (The lamp was found on the floor, by Ms. Kercher’s bed, and it may have been used to exam the bloodied floor around Ms. Kercher’s body to remove evidence, such as perhaps an earring and/or hair.)

49) Knox likely wiped away all her fingerprints throughout the entire house (While a number of fingerprints were found in the cottage and verified belonging to the three other flatmates, no fingerprints were found that could be matched to Knox, not in her room or elsewhere- except for one, on a glass in the kitchen.)

50) Knox and/or Sollecito repositioned Ms. Kercher’s body and covered it with the duvet. (Crime scene photos show from the streaks of blood that Ms. Kercher’s body was moved. There were masses of long hair mixed with blood on the floor, suggesting someone had yanked Ms. Kercher by her hair.)

Back At Sollecito’s Place

52) Sollecito and Knox returned to Sollecito’s place to clean up. They brought back the large knife and cleaned it with steel wool, and also tried to scrape away build-up/rust by the handle. (The knife was found at Sollecito’s place, with DNA traces of Knox on the handle and by the handle/blade joint, with a DNA trace of Ms. Kercher on the blade, with scratches on the blade and pockets of cleaned stainless steel by the handle.)

53) Sollecito likely disconnected the trap of his kitchen sink, perhaps to clean it. (The trap pipe was found disconnected.)

54) Sollecito and Knox likely used bleach to clean the floor of any blood. (Police observed a strong smell of bleach when entering Sollecito’s apartment.)

55) Sollecito and Knox apparently took a shower. (Knox has recounted a number of ‘ear cleaning’ and ’shower’ stories.)

56) Sollecito likely put blood stained clothes and shoes into one or more garbage bags and drove in the night to dump them somewhere.

57) Sollecito used his computer at around 5:30 AM and turned on his cellphone at around 6AM.

Events On The Next Morning

58) Knox was seen at a nearby store at around 7:45 AM, just as the store was opening. She was noticed going to the cleaning products section, wearing clothes that were ultimately found on her bed at the cottage.

59) Knox may have traveled back and forth from the cottage with a mop and/or garbage bags. (In her different versions, both verbal and written, she talks about ‘having to fetch a mop from the cottage’.)

60) Knox turned on her cellphone around noon.

The Police At The House

61) Knox and Sollecito were discovered at the cottage by the Postal Police at around 12:30 PM.

63) Knox called her mother in a panic at roughly 12:45 PM. Knox would later forget this phone call in her testimony and in her book.

64) Sollecito called the Carabinieri at around 12:50 PM, confirming nothing was stolen in Romanelli’s room, though he could not have possibly known this for certain.

65) When Ms. Kercher’s door was broken down, at around 1:15 PM, Sollecito and Knox were not with the group that broke the door down, and were not able to see inside the room.

66) Knox panicked when it seemed that Guede’s feces had been flushed by accident.

Later That Same Day

67) At the police station, Knox yelled out that Ms. Kercher ‘bled to death’.

68) At the police station, Knox inveighed against ‘those bastards’ after being fingerprinted, though it’s unclear whether she meant some other killers (and if so, why the plural), or the police.

One Day Later

69) On November 3, 2007, Sollecito lied to a reporter about how the discovery of Ms. Kercher’s body happened, recounting that Knox was the first to discover the body, and that he ‘saw blood everywhere’ even though he could not have seen into the room.

Two Days Later

70) On November 4, 2007, Knox emailed a narrative of the events from her point of view.

71) During the autopsy of November 4th, the prosecutor was convinced by the number and manner of the injuries on Ms. Kercher’s body that there had to be more than one assailant.

72) On November 4, 2007, Knox broke down when police showed her and the other roommates the knives in the silverware drawer at her cottage, to determine if any knives were missing. Knox had to be escorted outside to calm down.

73) Knox would later confess to her parents her concern about the knife at Sollecito’s apartment.

Three Days Later

74) On November 5, 2007, Sollecito failed to back up Knox and changed his alibi when confronted with cellphone records. He maintained Knox left his apartment from roughly 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM.

Four Days Later

75) On November 6, 2007, following Sollecito’s interrogation, Knox blamed Lumumba for the murder, first verbally, then in one written statement, then in a second statement that she offered voluntarily without coercion.

76) Knox failed to make an official retraction of her blaming Lumumba for the murder.

And Subsequentially

77) When first contacted by his friend via Skype, Guede spoke of a man with a knife who was shorter than he, and who had chestnut colored hair (like Sollecito). He also thought Knox was arguing with Ms. Kercher.

78) When Guede was arrested, Sollecito was concerned that Guede might say strange things about him. (If Sollecito was innocent, why be concerned about Guede?)

80) In court, as a response for finding Ms. Kercher’s DNA on the knife, Sollecito made up a story of pricking Ms. Kercher’s hand while cooking and subsequently apologizing to her about it. But Ms. Kercher had never been to his apartment. Sollecito recently retracted this story on Twitter.

81) Guede eventually confirmed that Sollecito and Knox were with him on the night of the murder.

Some Further Considerations

Ms. Kercher was not promiscuous and had scruples about watering the marijuana plants of the boys residing on the ground floor of the cottage. She had never expressed any interest in Guede to any of her closest friends. Similarly, Guede had never expressed any interest to any of his friends or acquaintances regarding Ms. Kercher.

Some 40+ wounds were found on Ms Kercher’s body. Despite being physically active and knowing martial arts maneuvers, she had few defensive wounds, mostly on the right hand.

She had bruising on her back, her left thigh, lower right leg, both elbows and wrists, the neck, the nose and mouth. She had two significant stab wounds of differing size on opposite sides of the neck, as well as various cuts on face, neck, hands.

No ligature marks were found on her ankles or wrists. She was therefore assaulted by multiple attackers. And as the evidence and trial reports have repeatedly indicated, the attackers were Knox, Sollecito and Guede, with Guede not responsible for the fatal wound.

It’s perhaps helpful to repeat what most of us know. Knox is a serial accuser…

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